Bad Romance
by mollygollyfolly
Summary: Minor Character Slash. **Updated! Ch48: Feeling rotten after being subject to Crouch's fury at work, Fabian goes to look for Antonin for some -ahem- comfort.** Now in 2nd half: Fabian Prewett/Antonin Dolohov. Set in the First Voldemort War, Order of the Phoenix vs Death Eaters, interspersed with modern day events.
1. Prologue

I write this sitting on the little porcelain sink in my cell. It was installed in the late nineties, and in the years before I can attest that we prisoners of Azkaban lived in the filthiest, rankest holes where it was all too likely for one to die of disease. I sit on my sink because it is the only other piece of furniture in my cell save for my bed, which is nothing more than a large plank nailed at a right angle to the wall and a layer of an old, patchy duvet for comfort.

I write this at the behest of a psychologist, Hannah Abbott. I say a psychologist because she is not my psychologist and I have no wish to see one. Dr Abbott has been appointed to the task of studying the psychological effects on prisoners of having Dementors guard this prison, as there is a growing political will to abolish this practice as it is inhumane. Dr Abbott presented us each with diaries to fill, diaries which will presumably be subject to much psychoanalysis and presumptions of mental illnesses.

If I sound level and lucid then I am, the years of being locked up in isolation with only Dementors for company have not destroyed me because there was nothing to destroy. All my life, as I remember, has been a blend of soulless, transparent grey. In Moscow as in London and now the island of Azkaban far up north beyond Scotland, the skies were always grey where I went, heavy with the clouds of a foreboding past tinged with sour regret.

Tucked in the final pages of my diary is a photo, stolen, for I am and will always remain a criminal, though thievery must surely be the least of my crimes. I dare not look at this photo much, and what I have seen of it was in stolen, furtive glances too. Still, I like knowing that it is there, so that I can hold this diary close to myself, and know that what is inside is all that I have known, the best and worst of it.


	2. Chapter 1

Sunlight, bright and scorching, burst through the windows of an old Huguenot house on Folgate Street, tucked in between units 13 and 15. No passerby would have seen the house, but all who passed agreed that warmth emanated from that place, the magical warmth of a home hearth crackling with love and joy.

Ronald Weasley was presently rustling up a cough remedy from Ollie James's 15 Minute Potions, a popular home-brewing recipe book by a roguish potions master with somewhat brusque methods.

Emulating the art of the master, Ronald Weasley folded a square of muslin around some Billywig stingers and unceremoniously whacked the little sack against the countertop.

"For goodness' sake Ronald!" Hermione Granger tutted. "Carry on with that and I'll be ill myself."

"I'm okay," Hugo Weasley mumbled weakly. "I swear I am. I'm good enough to sit up and eat. I can run and walk now."

"You, young sir, are strictly forbidden from any physical exertion until next week," Ron lectured. "You will go to your grandma's house and you will rest in bed only to get up at appropriate intervals for food and medicine."

"Will Lily be there?"

"Yes but she will be busy with the homework your aunt requested I set her," Hermione replied.

"Boo," Hugo said, cupping his cheeks with his palms and resting his elbows on the table.

When the cough remedy was ready, the three of them gathered their things and blew over to the Burrow with a handful of Floo dust. Hugo Weasley was to be looked after by his grandmother Molly, while his parents headed off to work on this sticky summer morning.

As he was about to leave, Molly pulled Ron aside and slipped a biscuit tin into the crook of his arm.

Quietly, she told him that she finally got around to clearing the last of her brothers' belongings from the house. The biscuit tin belonged to Fabian, and it was warded with a spell she could not crack. The contents must have been important to Fabian, but as he was long gone and the tin showed no signs of yielding, she thought she might as well let Ron have a crack at it, and if there was nothing more to be done he could finally dispose of it for her. Molly could not, even after several decades, find it in her to discard anything precious to her late brothers.

Ron brought the tin to work and promptly got distracted by more urgent duties until it was time to leave, when he saw Harry Potter standing over his desk straining to pry the tin open.

"You cannot honestly be hoarding such tasty snacks all to yourself, can you? My best friend of over twenty years!" Harry said.

"Erm...Harry, that tin is from the late seventies. I'm not sure its contents are edible."

"Oh."

"Well we should figure out how to open it anyway. Mum wants me to do it for her. Belonged to my Uncle Fabian this tin did."

"Using the state of the art gadgetry of the Auror office?" Harry waggled his brows with much excitement.

They proceeded into the secret laboratories where they attempted all forms of ward-breaking on the slightly rusty tin. It took them nearly an hour of magical exertion when Ron finally had the idea to call Bill for help. He picked up his shellphone, an outmoded, clunky conch the size of a brick, and called his eldest brother.

A miniature version of Bill's head popped out of the conch. He looked slightly annoyed, like he had been interrupted. Exasperated, he offered the silly suggestion of banging the tin on the floor, claiming that it would crack open like an egg.

Harry incredulously flung the tin on the floor, whereupon it cracked and its contents spilled like runny yolk.

"Merlin's fucking underpants!" Bill croaked from the conch, his face suddenly contorting into expression of interest. "Well that's pornography if I ever saw it!"

Bill was referring to a series of coloured photographs that were splayed like a fan across the floor. They seemed like blue holiday photos, in the other sense of the word, besides the fact that some of the photos were literally blue from the sky and sea.

Ron picked up one of the photos-which seemed coloured by a large expanse of flesh tones-with a shaky hand. "Ma never mentioned Uncle Fabian was a poof."

"-I'm not surprised," Bill cut in, whereupon Ron gave him a cold stare.

"Bloody fucking hell," Harry wheezed, peering over Ron's shoulder. "It's not just that your uncle seems to be cavorting in the nude with some other man, it seems that the other man is-was-" Harry choked on his words dramatically.

"A death eater!" Ron finished.


	3. Chapter 2

Across the table from Antonin Dolohov sat the trio of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. In the middle of the table was a fairly innocuous-looking holiday photograph, of two men standing with their arms awkwardly around each other in front of Brighton Pier.

"Please describe the nature of your relationship with Fabian Prewett," Hermione Granger began.

"Fabian Prewett?" Dolohov said dismissively. "He was an idiot. Such a fool. It is hard to believe how he had any credibility at all."

"What do you mean," Ron hissed. "Do you mean to imply he was on the dark side all this while?"

"No," Dolohov said. "He is too stupid for that sort of thing."

Ron scowled darkly. He looked like he was about to explode. "All right. We get that you don't like him. So can you please explain why, despite your apparent contempt, you seem to be chums in this photo?"

"This photo was evidently doctored," Dolohov said. "The pose is awkward and unnatural. It was most likely faked."

"Faked?" Ron exploded with rage. He threw another photo on the table. "Well what about this then!"

Dolohov quietly surveyed the photo for a while. This photo was considerably more compromising than the first, as it depicted two men locked in an embrace, standing on a sunny beach clutching, respectively, a 99 flake and an ice lolly. The dark-haired man had an arm enthusiastically wrapped around the other redheaded man's neck and his lips were pressed to the redheaded man's freckled cheek in a pucker. The 99 flake balanced precariously off its cone and the redheaded man's ice lolly was melting over his fingers.

Dolohov looked quizzically at the trio and insisted he knew nothing of the photo, not its provenance nor how it had come to be taken. The trio persisted in their questioning until it became evident that Ron was about to burst with apoplectic fury and flip the table over in frustration.

Hermione swiftly put an end to the interview and, after Dolohov had been brought back to his cell, discussed their next line of action. Ron was still incensed and muttering away so Harry dug into the biscuit tin and pulled up what he knew was the perfect diversion.

"So if Dolohov is a dead end, how about the Malfoys?" Harry said, with a devilish twinkle in his eyes. He brandished an old, yellowed copy of Utter Hogwash, the Hogwarts student newsletter. On the front page was a large photo of Narcissa Black, as she was known then, and Fabian Prewett mid-duet on the stage, gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.

Ron Weasley nearly burst a vein in his forehead and died of an aneurysm on the spot.


	4. Chapter 3

The haste with which Narcissa Malfoy sent her owl in reply stunned all three. Hermione had written in polite and formal terms requesting an interview in the strictest confidence about Fabian Prewett's liaisons with the Death Eaters, particularly romantic liaisons, to assist in a confidential investigation into his allegiances, expecting a firm rejection.

Mrs Malfoy eagerly welcomed them into her home and invited them to chat over tea. In her middle age she had taken on a slightly batty disposition, perhaps as a defense against all the allegations of evil wrongdoing to escape the arm of justice in the post-Voldemort world.

They were led into the most wondrous garden in this part of Wiltshire. It was warm and abuzz with colour and exotic spices from far flung regions. There was a distinct if somewhat colonial Indian theme to the garden, probably betraying parts of Malfoy history Hermione would rather not know.

Mrs Malfoy had the elves bring out the finest tea from all over in the daintiest bone china. Hermione was unable to restrain herself from asking if these elves were now in paid employ. Mrs Malfoy indicated the affirmative, though from her expression it seemed grudgingly so.

After several sips of a multilayered, aromatic tea and a few nibbles of the thinnest cucumber sandwiches, Hermione cleared her throat and began. "Please be assured, Mrs Malfoy, that everything you say will be in the strictest confidence."

"Oh, please call me Narcissa. And honestly, one doesn't mind if this gets out. One feels one is getting on, and one simply must tell this story before one loses it. Even if it is...it is..." She trailed off.

"It is?" Hermione prompted.

"...too late now!" Narcissa sighed dramatically.

Harry and Ron exchanged incredulous looks. Narcissa carried on, unaware of the reception to her melodrama. "Oh poor cousin Evan!" She sighed.

"Evan? Do you mean Evan Rosier?" Hermione prodded.

"Yes! Aren't we here to discuss Fabian's romantic liaisons? Ah! Cousin Evan was on the brink of redemption. If only they could be in love again and things went back to the way they were..."

From somewhere behind her, Hermione could hear Ron choking on a mille-feuille.

"Do you mean to say Fabian Prewett and Evan Rosier were romantically involved?" She questioned.

"Oh they were, back in Hogwarts, but they fell out in year seven. One maintains that they always had affection for each other even after and if only they would rekindle that flame..."

Ron began glugging down copious mouthfuls of exquisite osmanthus tea in a bid to restrain from choking.

"Please tell me more!" Hermione prompted through a forced smile. She was trying very hard not to break into laughter at her husband's behaviour but worried if she would first die of social embarrassment.


	5. Chapter 4

There was nary a sound in the Hogwarts library, not even the rustling of a page or the occasional cough or sniffle from a poorly student succumbing to the stress of academic obligations. The library was empty, all was a hush. Behind her desk Madam Pince browsed silently through a book catalogue, tasked with purchasing several new tomes that would broaden the young minds of the students.

In the far corner, where the section for Undersea Potion Ingredient Harvesting ended and where the Agrippan method of Arithmancy began, where tall, gangly shelves cloistered a small cluster of wooden desks, lay the Raven's Nest, the den where the most studious of Ravenclaws were frequently found with beaks buried in books. In the midst of the Nest a lone student sat, a tall, gangly, freckled fifth year student with a shock of red hair and too-short trousers that ended above his ankles and too-short sleeves that ended before his wrists. The student was rifling through Principia Arithmomantia, looking for a particular proof. It was far too quiet, beyond the usual library hush, as to be slightly unnerving, though this student seemed blissfully unaware.

The silence was abruptly shattered by the entrance of Hogwarts's top performing student, academically speaking, followed by a procession of levitating potion books. This student made her way to the nest and the books clattered noisily onto the table.

"What are you doing here?" Alice Giggs asked.

Fabian Prewett looked up from his books. "What do you mean?"

"Your brother's match? His first as captain of Gryffindor?"

There was a sudden crash as Fabian stood up with alacrity, the chair he until recently occupied falling to the ground.

"Gryffindor versus Slytherin!" he exclaimed, swiftly gathering his things. "Oh I'm late!" he blabbered. "Has it kicked off?"

Alice nodded with disdain. The emptiness of the library could be ascribed to this violent, barbaric sport, as students indulged in the spirit of pre-civilisation ancestors, cheering lustily for the complete annihilation of the enemy.

Fabian suddenly enfolded her in a tight hug as he expressed his utmost gratitude for her reminder. He would not forgive himself if he missed his twin brother's first match as captain.

As he dashed pitchward, from a distance he could already see tiny figures, some clad in red and some in green, rising above the stands to kick off the school year's Quidditch opener.

Gideon Prewett was his identical twin brother but most, if asked, would scarce believe it. Sorted into separate houses in their first year, their paths diverged ever farther since. Gideon Prewett was immediately likeable and popular, with a spotless reputation as one shining with a genuine goodness and approachability.

Fabian Prewett, by some twist of fate, was the lesser and younger of the two, always seeking cover behind his books from the cruelty of the world. Gentle by nature but lost in the fantasy of his inner world, he struggled with the intricate nuances of social convention.

Making his way up the stand, his gangly, stick-like legs flopping up over the steps two by two, he reached the highest stand where he squeezed his way into a gap between two students.

"Frank Longbottom is soooooo dreamy, don't you think?" A third year female student sighed.

"Oh but I think Alistair Thomas is the one for me," her friend gushed. "He has the grace of a true aristocrat."

"I want Gideon Prewett, but it's such a tragedy that he's taken," yet another swooned, a very young boy who looked no older than a third-year.

Fabian had half a mind to clear his throat, which he decided to, because he did not like hearing of his brother discussed this way, and the gaggle of gushing students glared at him with mild distaste.

Up in the sky, high above them like the deities of the student body, the well-formed and physically perfect Quidditch players of Hogwarts darted about the sky revelling in the suppleness of their youthful physique.

Gryffindor were leading by a small margin, thanks to the combined power of Prewett, Longbottom and Elkins. Gideon Prewett was the classic midfield playmaker, dictating the tempo of the game with the silkiest passes. Frank Longbottom was the sweeper, snaffling the Quaffle from the opponent before they could threaten, and Elveira Elkins was the forward, driving into goal with an unstoppable fierceness.

However, for all the spirit of play from the House of Gryffindor, the House of Slytherin had an effortless counterpart oozing with talent. Holding the fort was team captain Alistair Lindsay Thomas, who, since taking the reins from the incomparable (if somewhat brutal) Beater Bellatrix Lestrange, built a team known for aerial grace. The jewel in this crown was Evan Rosier, a seeker who embodied poetry in motion, who ensnared the hearts of many of the Hogwarts population as he ensnared the Golden Snitch. Rosier, whose waves of dark hair fell about his handsome face in a perfect frame, with eyes of piercing blue the shade of the Aegean Sea, whence the maternal branch sprung. Some might have considered his slight frame a possible flaw but for a seeker he had the perfect build. To deepen his appeal he had a complicated family history, and bore on him the pain of parents early separated in a high-profile divorce that filled the gossip pages for months. Yet thanks to this heritage in him lay the classic beauty of Greece and the honour of noble English blood. To this, it is added in whispers, the inheritance of a vast shipping wealth and the unshakeable seat of an ancient dwelling.

It was ultimately the sublime skill of Evan Rosier that decided the match. In an elegant sleight of hand it was as if he conjured the snitch out of his sleeve, and the season opener was over.

Overcome with guilt that his brother should lose his first match, Fabian made his way to the sweaty, stinky locker rooms after the match to offer a few consolatory words. He gave his shirtless brother an affectionate hug, inviting a few murmurs about their suspicious closeness, and patted Longbottom and Elkins on the shoulder, who both responded with polite smiles at his sympathy.

He turned to leave as the Slytherin team began filing in. The Slytherins congratulated Gryffindor on a match well-played, and the Gryffindors responded in all sincerity, for these were times in which inter-house relations were cordial. Sportsmanship and graciousness were held in high regard, and the true student hierarchy was determined by one's popularity-of which all Quidditch players had in spades.

As Fabian left the locker room, he was vaguely aware that he was being tailed. He hurried along into the castle grounds to lose his pursuer, meandering around sparsely populated, little-known areas until he lost his patience and did an about turn. Evan Rosier had been tailing him, still clad in his Quidditch outfit, for goodness knows what.

"Are you following me?" Fabian demanded.

"What? No," Evan feigned surprise. "I was just searching for an empty bathroom."

"You know as well as I do that there are no bathroom stalls on the fifth floor of this wing," Fabian replied, for they were both prefects of their respective houses and better acquainted with the grounds due to patrolling duties.

"Well, maybe an empty loo?" Evan shrugged, putting on a clueless, pouty expression that Fabian found incredibly infuriating.

"Ugh!" Fabian said in disgust, although he couldn't exactly tell what he was disgusted at. Was it the aggravatingly bad acting of Evan Rosier? Was it...himself? Particularly, the tumultuous mix of feelings that hit him every time he looked at that handsome, aristocratic face?

Evan smiled at him, a cheeky half-smirk and Fabian could resist no longer. He leaned forward and grabbed Evan and they began snogging like two hormonal teenagers in the grips of rabid puberty.


	6. Chapter 5

Just at the close of summer, in the weeks before school was about to start, there appeared an article in the Daily Prophet that shook the foundations of the wizarding world. It was announced that a series of new rules, pending approval, would be put forth, governing the suitability of those who would sit on the Wizengamot.

No longer could scions of the old magic houses ascend automatically to the Wizengamot. Due to the increasing political will to ensure that wastrels were not occupying the Wizengamot when a plethora of better-suited but less well born candidates were available, it was proposed that all peers should meet certain basic academic requirements to ensure a functioning knowledge of magic.

This caused quite a stir, notably amongst the upper classes of the wizarding world, though due to sheer pride their public front was one in which they claimed the minimum academic requirements were to pose no obstacle at all.

All this resulted in a private conversation between Evan Rosier and Fabian Prewett on the first day of their fifth year in Hogwarts. Evan Rosier was of the sporting type, and failed to apply himself academically and was therefore behind on his magical learning. Due to parental and external pressure he required extracurricular tutoring to get him up to speed, and he needed to pick a non-threatening but intelligent student who would discreetly coach him in exam-passing ways. For this reason he singled out the somewhat friendless Fabian Prewett, who was surprisingly appointed to the post of Ravenclaw prefect.

Clandestine tutoring sessions were set up, to take place in the cover of dark and away from sight, for the embarrassment of having need of tutoring would be too much for Evan to bear. It was through these sessions that teenage infatuation began to blossom between the two boys, for in his loneliness Fabian must have found this sudden and close attention from a highly desirable member of the student body overwhelming.

…

Narcissa Malfoy coughed and gently patted the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

"If Evan was so hot, as you say, why would he even bother with Fabian?" Ron asked with an unpleasant frown.

"Oh, please do not be quick to judge cousin Evan. He was a poor, love-starved boy as well, what with his parents. He must have found Fabian's infatuation very gratifying and together they had a love that fortified them against the harshness of the real world..."

Ron looked like he was about to throw up.

Harry jumped in before things got out of hand, and waved the old and yellowed copy of Utter Hogwash in Mrs Malfoy's face. "What then do you make of this picture?"

Narcissa's eyes lit up upon seeing the photo. "Ah! One has nearly forgot! It was the Hogsmeade Fayre!"

"The Hogsmeade Fayre?" Hermione questioned. "What was it?"

"A charity fundraiser!" Narcissa exclaimed in delight. It seemed that charity fundraisers really got her going, Hermione silently noted.

"It was for the benefit of the Hogwarts Student Foundation, which hands out scholarships and bursaries to students from less privileged backgrounds," Narcissa declared pompously. "Your Uncle Fabian was a notable recipient of this aid, as, I'm sure," -she sniffed- "members of your family have been."

Hermione could see Ron gripping the fine china cup so tightly he was about to snap the handle off. She put a hand on his knee, and Ron gave her a pleading, get-me-out-of-here look.


	7. Chapter 6

Evan Rosier was pootling down towards the Great Hall, having just come from History of Magic class, of which the mind-numbingly dull subject inadvertently caused him to become fixated on his next meal, which often led to a groaning in his stomach. Now that it was time for lunch he was eager to see the choices on offer. He hoped that there was banoffee pie today, o sweet, delectable banoffee pie, the perfect blend of condensed milk and banana, as homely and toothsome a pudding could ever be.

As he descended the stairs he felt a resistance tugging at his sleeve. Whoever was so bold as to hinder his quest for pudding!

Lo, it was Lucius Malfoy, exemplar bar none of the nouveau riche, mercenary scum of the earth whose coat tails were fit only for Quidditch-boot wiping. Quidditch boot wiping after said boot had trod upon a muddied field after a thunderstorm. What did this pest want of him?

"_Rosier_," Malfoy hissed in a conspiratorial tone.

"What?"

"I have a..." Malfoy shuffled his feet and twisted his foot upon his toe in an uncertain manner. "I have a request to make of you. Do you have time to spare?"

Evan thought of his banoffee pie. Flatly, he said, "No."

Malfoy frowned. "Please?" he begged.

"What could be so important?"

"Ah," said Malfoy, anxiety crossing his face. "It concerns your cousin."

"Cissy?" Evan said loudly.

Malfoy had a startled look like a stunned hinkypuff. "Please moderate your volume. I can't have others eavesdropping..."

"Oh I know," Evan sighed dramatically. "You're in love with her. You wish me to put in a good word for you that you may begin your courtship of her. You wish to have my blessing in wooing my cousin."

A pink flush descended upon the cheeks of Lucius Malfoy. "No! It was for another more pertinent reason..."

"Honestly!" Evan remarked. "You're only about the five hundred and seventeenth person to do so. I'm sorry but you've got no chance with her. Good day."

"I mean to ask," Malfoy choked out. "It has come to my attention that she has been spending a considerable amount of time in the company of one Fabian Prewett."

"_L'etudiant pauvre_? Are you wondering why she would stoop to someone like him? After all, what can he offer that you can't?"

Malfoy looked affronted. "I am not that crass! I am merely wondering if she has been taken."

"For that matter, my cousin is not an object for you, or anyone, to take! If she chooses to spend her time with that _pauvre_ she jolly well can! She is not taken but merely preoccupied."

Malfoy frowned at him. He had the appearance of a man greatly offended.

"Never take offence, my dear," Evan said. "Offence is for small people."

…..

Much to his dismay there was no banoffee pie to be had. The pudding of the day was sponge cake, which Evan scarfed down anyway.

After this most unsatisfactory of lunches he charged to the prefect's room, to file away some bookings he made for uniform breaches (failure to attach crest on outer robe with correct sticking spell, wearing of ugly shoes, failure to wear house tie in the correct knot) to assuage his emotional state.

He chanced upon Cissy and Fabian in the prefect's room, practising the duet they were to perform at the Hogsmeade Fayre talent show that was to round off a day of fundraising festivities.

"You'd never guess who tried to talk to me today," Evan began.

"Ramona Wiggleswade?" Narcissa Black ventured.

Evan wrinkled his nose in disgust. "No. Lucius Malfoy."

Narcissa looked genuinely surprised and struggled to mask her genuine interest. "What business does he have with you?"

"It's not me, Cissy. It's you he wants."

"Oh, tosh," Cissy dismissed. "As if."

"He thinks you're seeing Fabian," Evan continued. "He's getting all green-eyed. What do you say, Fabykins? Lucius Malfoy thinks you're seeing Narcissa Black!"

"Wherever did he get the idea?" said Fabian, slightly taken aback. He was used to being invisible and it surprised him to realise that students of much higher social standing were taking notice of him.

"Oh I don't know. Maybe because I'm always around Cissy and you're always around me?"

"I'm not always around you!" Fabian protested. "I thought we did a good job of being discreet."

"Oh!" Narcissa interjected. "Fabian dear, do not worry, if word gets around we're seeing each other it can only affirm that you have reoriented yourself. That is good, as it also improves your social standing by dint of being Narcissa Black-approved."

"You think too much of yourself, Cissy darling," Evan teased.

"Reoriented myself," Fabian mumbled, still fixated on the idea that rumours about him were circulating once more. He thought he was done with this in third year with the whole George Varey Goode business.

"Fret not my love," Evan began, and then sprawled himself over the sofa. He reached an arm over the back to where Fabian was standing, and gave him a naughty pinch on the bum.

Fabian squealed defensively, and from the piano, where Narcissa was sitting, there was another squeal, but of delight. Both boys cast a look at her, whereupon she hastily apologised and went back to playing a jaunty tune grinning to herself.

Fabian's face contorted to a series of expressions meant to convey the message that all this was really rather inappropriate but Evan ignored him save for a little smirk that said that this naughty business was to be continued.


	8. Chapter 7

The day of the Hogsmeade Fayre had finally come around and the entire village of Hogsmeade was overrun with Hogwarts students eager to do their part for charity. On this day, parents and visitors were encouraged to visit and to participate in the student-run game booths, or to purchase a handmade trinket or two. Meanwhile, the teaching staff was relegated to observation, having been convinced by the prefectorial board that they were more than capable of being in charge.

All was abuzz and as a prefect Fabian's duty was to move from booth to booth, ensuring that nothing had gone out of hand. Presently he came to a game booth run by the Potions Club, in which participants sat on a levitating chair and had to answer questions of increasing difficulty or face being dunked onto a bubbling vat of potion. The particular type of potion the challenger faced being smothered in was chosen at random via spin-a-wheel.

As chair of the Potions Club, Alice Giggs took leave from her prefectorial duties from time to time to hold the post of game master. It was at this point that Fabian decided to submit himself to the possibility of turning blue for an entire week, or to suffer from extremely large boogers, or to say everything backwards or...whatever the mystery potion would inflict.

Alice greeted him cheerily as he strapped himself into the levitating chair. Underneath, a cauldron large enough to fit three students gurgled threateningly, swirling from colour to colour, running the gamut of all the possible fates that awaited him.

With a perfectly innocuous smile, Alice announced that she would start with difficult questions and move on to monstrously difficult and then to pants-wettingly difficult and so on.

For a moment, Fabian considered reminding Alice of their longstanding friendship, but he was fairly sure Alice was not one to forget such things and convinced himself there was no need to.

A greasy-haired first-year potions club member hoisted Fabian and his chair into the air, and then went back to his usual business of stirring the cauldron. Halfway through, Fabian saw him scratch his hair, and flakes of dandruff fell into the cauldron, whereupon they burst into flames with a loud crackle. Fabian shuddered, but then reminded himself that he was not the most hygienic of persons so it was all fine and dandy.

Unfortunately, just as she was about to start, Alice was called away to some important prefectorial duty or other, so the first year student took over the question cards and began grilling Fabian.

Fabian was coasting along comfortably, handling the questions with ease when a group of rowdy students turned up and decided to oust the first year Potions Club boy, and began to ask Fabian ridiculous, off-the-cards questions.

At the same time, because Fabian had answered so many questions right, his chair had risen ever higher until he had a spectacular, if somewhat unsettling view of Hogsmeade village. He could see the myriad stalls around him. In the village square, Professor Flitwick was conducting the Hogwarts Choir. The Bowtruckle Club had a booth at the far end, selling assorted vintage trinkets they had been collectively hoarding. The chair had gone too high and the spell was starting to lose some potency. Fabian gripped the sides tightly, for he had a fear of heights from unstable vantage points, and he tried in vain to muster up enough courage to pluck his hand from the side of the chair in order to pick up his wand and stabilise the weakening levitation charm.

In the distance, he heard some kind of exclamation and saw his brother making a beeline for the Potions Club booth, tailed by his usual posse of Quidditch chums. The chair wobbled precariously, and there was some commotion below. From this point he also saw Alice realising that a crisis was at hand and she abandoned her post at Informational Services post-haste.

At this time, the sun was setting and a blast of wind blew over the land, tipping Fabian and his chair over in a loop-de-loop. Fabian squeaked in fright and at this point he saw a flash of blue light from below, like a rope made of light, which whipped around his chair and tethered him. Professor Flitwick had cast a lasso charm, and was reeling him back to the ground.

Alice stood by lecturing the hijackers of her game, who made excuses that it was all in good fun and no harm was done, but Alice, bless her, was never one to have a sense of humour and was increasingly agitated by the young students' blasé attitude towards safety regulations.

As Fabian came within earshot of the commotion, he began to make out a rising argument. The young students muttered that Alice was a humourless shrew, and implied that she was probably on the chubby side and for this reason no male of the species would ever find her attractive.

Before Alice could reply, Frank Longbottom, who had been standing next to Gideon who had been calling out for help, burst into a fit of rage at the offending firsties.

"Oh, look at me, I'm so witty! I'm going to make blatant personal attacks disguised as jokes because I'm so-ha ha ha- funny!" Frank remarked sarcastically, throwing his hands up in the air.

"It was just a joke," one of them whined. "God I didn't know you seniors can't take a joke."

"Where's your house loyalty, man?" another chimed in. "Gryffindors for Gryffindors, huh? Defend us from this Ravenclaw banshee."

Frank made a look of utmost incredulity. He thought for a moment, and then tipped the giant bubbling cauldron onto the band of offenders. The contents of the cauldron crawled down in a slimy goo, enveloping the querulous students in a multicoloured sheen, turning them into single, slimy mass. The large mound of jelly wobbled to the left, and then to the right, and then finally off towards the castle, presumably to get cleaned up.

True to the humourless form of the senior students, no one was seen laughing. They merely exchanged many knowing looks, like they had all been privy to an in-joke, and then began a chorus of lamenting how the new students seemed ever increasingly unintelligent and offensive.

Frank Longbottom asked Alice Giggs if she was all right, to which she replied that she could have handled the situation herself, and if Frank was looking for kudos or gratitude for this defence of her honour it was not going to be found.

After some thought, Frank apologised in reply, and said that it was regretful that he sought to butt in only because he thought his words would hold more sway because of who he was-as a popular male Quidditch player, which only served to prove the firsties right in their prejudice.

It later transpired that, even after getting rid of the slimy jelly, the offending students suffered from a terrible case of dandruff over the next few months, in which the dandruff flakes were as large as Sickles and occasionally flapped around their heads like hairy moths, multiplying with each scratch of the head. Reportedly, it was also unbearably, irresistibly itchy.


	9. Chapter 8

Fabian Prewett eventually recovered enough of his voice to sing onstage in the highlight of the night, a series of jazzed-up love songs taken from various popular musicals. It was Narcissa's idea that it should be particularly glamorous, and for this occasion she was clad in a slinky, pearly blue sequinned gown with ultra-glitzy long white satin gloves. Fabian, a run-of-the-mill Welsh boy who was on school assistance, had nothing to wear and was at the last minute lovingly outfitted by his boy-friend Evan Rosier. Evan had pulled together a dressy outfit from various wardrobes including his own, and had gone to the effort of putting on some temporary alteration charms to get the fit just right. Fabian had never seen himself look so dapper, and he thought that if he looked like this every day, he might just fall in love with himself too.

The talent show was a rousing success, and being prefects, Narcissa and Fabian were not actually competing. Their section was to entertain the audience in the interlude while the judges, comprised of a collection of professors and prefects, finalised their top picks of the night. A few tongues were set wagging about the nature of Narcissa and Fabian's relationship, but even more tongues wagged when Fabian refused to change the pronouns in the song "I'll Cast A Spell On You", thus making it rather apparent that he was longing for a man's strong embrace.

Lucius Malfoy sat on the judging panel, as a sixth year Slytherin prefect. The whole performance rather disturbed him and he was squirming in his seat at its various implications. Narcissa was very, very alluring here, and he could swear that she was singing to a particular member of the audience. Based on his powers of observation, he concluded that she must have been gazing at Alistair Thomas during the bridge of Floo Me To The Moon and at each point before the chorus of Choco Loco Lovin'.

Halfway through Cheek To Beak, a song about a lover who was turned into a hippogriff and back again, Alistair Thomas, who had been standing behind Lucius all this while, leaned in and said to him, "I think a certain Miss Black is sending a message to you."

"What?" Lucius croaked, unsure if he had heard correctly.

"I have it on good authority," Alistair said firmly, hoping the hint was more obvious this time.

Lucius felt overcome with nausea. It was cruel, so cruel, for his best friend to lie to him like this. Could he not see that all this while Narcissa was making goo goo eyes in _his_ direction? Did she not beg for _his_ company for dinner just this past week? He felt a soul crushing devastation. He imagined himself as the best man at the wedding of Alistair Thomas and Narcissa Black, now to be Mrs Thomas...

He was startled from his fervent imagining when Professor McGonagall demanded his scoring papers to tally up the top ten participants, who would be rewarded with book vouchers from Flourish and Blotts.

The evening soon concluded and everyone began heaping praise on Narcissa Black for her wonderful organisation and initiative as chief planner for the Hogsmeade Fayre. In truth, a major contributing factor to the nearly authoritarian powers of the prefectorial board came down to what can be termed the Black Axis. Andromeda Black was in her final year at Hogwarts and had ascended to the throne of Head Girl, accompanied by her Prince Consort, Edward Tonks, who took on the role of Head Boy.

They could be rightly termed a power couple, for each complemented the other perfectly and both were so finely skilled in social graces that no one ever made an enemy of them.

Two years below, Andromeda had her younger sister, who, being naturally full of fancy, devised numerous propaganda campaigns, the second of which came several months later in the month of February.


	10. Chapter 9

It was another fundraising scheme of Narcissa's, for the fourteenth of February, that for a small fee that would go towards the Friends of Sherwood Forest Fund, a student received a small, fluttering piece of pink parchment shaped like a heart, on which could be scribbled a sentimental phrase or two. The little heart-shaped parchment would then fly onwards to its prescribed recipient, flapping its sides like a butterfly and leaving a trail of sparkles.

For a larger fee, the prefects would play the part of singing minstrels on behalf of some enterprising paramour to convey the ardent message of their heart's desire.

One day before V-day, Fabian was collecting donations at the booth just inside the Great Hall when he saw his twin brother approaching.

Gideon looked moderately vexed, and when he reached the booth he spontaneously squeezed himself onto Fabian's chair, so that Fabian had to dangle on a single bum cheek in order to maintain a seated position while accommodating his brother.

Fabian noticed some of the students looking up at Gideon with barely-concealed delight, and he swore at that moment some of them put in extra donations and helped themselves to a handful of parchments on which they scribbled enthusiastically while sneaking admiring looks at his brother.

"So uh," Gideon began in a low tone, "is there really no provision in the school rules allowing students to wear a combination of the official uniform as they saw fit?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean uh, we all have our robes, right, the ones lined in our house colour? And under our robes we wear a dress shirt and house tie, and supposedly, girls have to wear a skirt and boys trousers."

"Yes?"

"And is it against school rules for girls to wear trousers? What if, strictly, she doesn't consider herself a girl anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Fabian asked, unsure where this was leading.

Gideon looked at him accusingly. "I thought you would be well-acquainted with school rules! You seem to have memorised everything there is to know from the Encyclopedia Magica."

Fabian bristled with mild annoyance. "I don't care for pedantry of this sort!"

"You know Charlie? Charlie McKinnon?"

Fabian tried to remember. It was the younger sibling of Marlene McKinnon, Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain. Fabian suspected Gideon and Marlene had a thing for each other but had no idea how far they had progressed on admitting their feelings. Sometimes he wondered if he should get the word out on Gideon's behalf.

"Well Lucius Malfoy had him booked for wearing trousers!" Gideon concluded.

Fabian then recalled seeing Lucius Malfoy file in a booking just a couple of hours ago on Charlotte McKinnon-uniform breach. To the casual eavesdropper it may have sounded slightly confusing but Charlie dressed and acted like a boy, so it seemed natural to address a person by their preferred pronoun.

"So-this is actually Marlene's idea-, we were thinking that it's a really preposterous rule, because, come on, trousers and skirts are both part of the official school uniform, so as long as any person has either one, or even both on, it shouldn't be a breach of school rules. Wouldn't you agree that the underlying purpose here is that we do not have students running around in their underpants? It should be the spirit of the law that matters."

"Yes?" Fabian prodded, although he already had some idea of where this was going.

"So..." Gideon said again, "we're thinking of doing a protest tomorrow by encouraging students to wear the lower garment of their choosing, be it a skirt or trousers or both!"

Fabian took a deep breath before cutting in. "And you'll be in a skirt!"

Gideon feigned an expression of shock. "As always, you read my mind, dear brother!"

"I'm not done with my telepathy," Fabian said. "You want me in a skirt as well, you big old pervert."

Gideon grinned at Fabian lecherously, running a hand up and down Fabian's thigh. "Legs like yours," he said in a silky tone, "shouldn't be kept hidden from the world."

Fabian decided to retaliate with a grope in a naughty region and then realised too late that some first year girl was gaping at them. He hastily apologised and emphasised that it was all in kidding.

Evan Rosier turned up while Gideon still had a hand on Fabian's thigh, and gave Fabian a surreptitious nod that he found this hanky-panky a huge turn-on.

...

Later, Fabian informed Evan of his intention to cross-dress, after which Evan informed Narcissa of _his_ intention to cross dress and it was imperative they borrowed her skirts for this endeavour.

Narcissa seemed to find the idea particularly exciting, and borrowed a pair of school trousers from Evan in exchange for two skirts. Being small in stature, Narcissa's skirts, when worn by the tallish Fabian, were of a rather indecent length, but due to Evan's fervent protestations Fabian was not allowed to increase the length of his skirt.

"You do know that at this length my skirt is completely in breach of school regulations regardless? "

Evan nodded with a satisfied smirk. Narcissa remarked that it was no different to the ancient Greeks in their togas. After that, she went back into scanning all the Valentine's messages for choice bits of gossip, which she giddily relayed to her cousin. Fabian protested that this was a breach of privacy, but Narcissa argued that since all messages were signed off anonymously, all she did was merely speculate.

...

Valentine's Day rolled around surely enough, and during breakfast time a sizeable chunk of the student populace turned up in irregular uniforms. The bolder students seized the opportunity to break even more school rules, wearing robes and ties of mismatched houses or fashioning school ties into belts and many girls turned up in trousers, a handful of boys in skirts, and many more boys with skirts over trousers.

Lucius Malfoy nearly threw a fit upon the sight, and was about to go on a mass-booking spree when he espied Narcissa Black gliding into the hall in a pair of curiously well-fitting school trousers, perfectly cinched at the waist and tapering down gently to skim the ankles. What confoundment had befallen the school! This was getting too far out of hand! A blurring of the lines between the genders, combined with blatant uniform breaches that signified irreversible moral decay...

Presently, Narcissa Black floated over to the Slytherin table and helped herself to a serving of eggs on toast. Upon noticing that Lucius Malfoy was looking at her she greeted him perkily.

Lucius Malfoy felt a pang of betrayal. He was fairly certain this cross-dressing caper was orchestrated by the pesky Quidditch players whose popularity had gone too far above their heads and believed they were above school rules. He did not expect that the cherished one of his heart should participate in this celebration of anarchy.

He looked across the hall to the Hufflepuff table, where Charlotte McKinnon was sat partaking breakfast with her older sister, who was also clad in trousers. From this distance he glared at them, emanating a silent resentment, swearing to himself that he would exact his revenge. He saw that blight on humanity of a Gryffindor Quidditch Captain approach that table and sit on the table, crossing his legs in a rather obscene manner for all the world to see.

He then saw that other worse blight on humanity, the twin brother of the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, approach that very same table, clad in the most indecent of skirts it was barely a skirt and more like a thick belt. Had he no sense of shame? He was dressed like a hussy! Lucius felt bile rising to his throat.

So, that was the malignant influence on his cherished one! The déclassé freckled ginger Welsh boy and his boorish brother and his boorish brother's girlfriend and her morally deficient younger sister, who refused to accept what fate had dealt to her and was clearly delusional about her identity.

"Lucius!" Evan Rosier called, reaching uncomfortable levels of familiarity with the first name. Lucius noted that he, too, was clad in a skirt. "Why so..." Evan paused, searching for the right word. "Constipated!" he finally emitted.

All around him, students burst into cruel laughter. Rosier then bent over and flashed his bare bottom into Lucius's face. The laughter grew ever more raucous.

At this, he felt himself being gently scooted away. Looking over his arm, he saw that it was Narcissa and his heart quickened a bit. He suddenly felt guilty, like he didn't want to appear stodgy and humourless before her.

Having manoeuvred Lucius into a private corner, Narcissa asked him if he was feeling fine. Lucius began to confess that all this anarchy was a reaction to a booking he made yesterday, whereupon Narcissa gently chided him for being a dullard, and that he should watch himself before he got too Muggle in his thinking, when true wizarding ancestors of yore pranced around freely in togas and kilts and robes.


	11. Chapter 10

Andromeda Black grew sympathetic to the cause of the gender-benders and as Head Girl, called for a meeting with Headmaster Dumbledore to get the rules relaxed. Fortunately Professor Dumbledore had no interest in seeing these rules enforced anyway, so these school rules were provisionally abolished, however approval from the school board was required to officially remove the rules from the rulebook.

Meanwhile, the Valentine's messages began reaching their intended recipients, as prefects took out the first batch of the day and shook them out of the box as if to wake them up. The messages were to be distributed in batches in-between lesson periods, so as not to disrupt the teachers.

It quickly became evident that some students were more beloved than others. Quidditch players, in particular, received a large share of the messages.

Fabian saw that his brother was already at the point of being beleaguered by parchment hearts masquerading as butterflies. These parchment hearts would only quell after being read, but, not having nearly enough time to read all his messages, the unread parchment hearts grew ever livelier and began sitting on his head or his nose, or his ears, now to dart into his schoolbag, or now to squeeze itself into an overfull pocket already stuffed with other parchment hearts.

Frank Longbottom seemed to suffer a similar fate, but struck upon the brilliant idea of charming those around him to read his messages for him. This gave the students who were enamoured of Frank the perfect opportunity to declare their love for him, and Fabian saw some students secretly discard messages from rivals they did not approve of.

Gideon, however, was not prone to opening himself up to flirtatiousness, so he ran to Fabian for help. Fabian willingly agreed, and went around trapping Gideon's wild parchment hearts into a large sack so that they would not disturb other students.

During lunch, he sequestered the two of them in an unused classroom to read, as quickly as possible, all the messages that Gideon received. Fabian took this opportunity to ask if Gideon and Marlene were an item, to which he sheepishly replied that he had no idea.

"No idea? What do you mean no idea? It seems a matter of time to me. It is inevitable." Fabian said.

"Yes, well, what are the markers of an official relationship? What exactly are those things two people have to go through before they can call themselves a couple anyway?"

"The two of you have been really good friends for ages, Gideon."

"Yes, but maybe we want it that way."

"Do you?"

"Doesn't matter what I want. It's what she wants."

"Does she want to keep it friends only?"

Gideon shrugged.

"Well if she does then you should get over it! And if she doesn't, you should really do something about it. So, which is it?"

Gideon began to laugh nervously.

"Fine then, be a right git!" Fabian huffed. He went back to reading the Gideon's Valentine's messages.

_Roses are red, violets are blue. Take off your shirt, and I will love you._ This message was blatantly signed off.

"This one's from Frank," Fabian said, passing the slip of parchment over.

"Listen to this," Gideon said, as he begun to quote from another message. "I'm not in love with you, but I think you're in love with Frank Longbottom. If you would be so kind as to snog him in public, it would really mean a lot to me. It would nourish my poorly teenage heart and I will always think fondly of it as the best moment of my life."

"I second that," Fabian said, with a suggestive waggle of the eyebrows.

"You could do it for me. Pretend to be me and snog it out with Frank." Gideon laughed, and then there was an awkward pause in which Gideon didn't say anything but Fabian could almost hear him thinking—so little brother, are you really, honestly into boys?

"Yeah, yeah I'd like that," Fabian replied, looking straight into Gideon's eyes, hoping he would get the hint. "Doesn't mean you will."

"But we're identical," Gideon said. "If you are, does that mean I am too?"

Fabian's heart skipped a beat. He felt his throat get a bit dry. "Are you?"

"I don't think I am," Gideon said hesitantly. "Or maybe I am."

"You don't have to decide now, Gideon. You don't ever have to decide."

Gideon gave him a hug. "Thanks Fabe," he said.

Fabian smiled wanly and went back to reading the parchment hearts. He wanted to say, you don't ever have to decide because people will love you anyway. _We're not always identical._

"I'm sorry," Gideon said abruptly. "What you said to me—I really wish I could have said that to you first."

"It's okay," Fabian said, brightening up. "I know you love me no matter what."

"Yes, I do," said Gideon, breaking into that devastating, warm smile that only _he_ could give, the one that made any person feel like they were the only one in the world that mattered to him and the one that won him the hearts of so many.

Gideon pulled something out of his bag. It was a crumpled-up piece of papyrus, crudely cut into the shape of a heart. "This is for you, because they didn't have any papyrus versions up at the booth, and I thought they would have some because you're a prefect and all."

"No one cares about me but you, Gid," Fabian said half-jokingly.

Lunchtime was soon over and the twins parted for their separate lessons. Fabian didn't bother to read the message on the papyrus heart but left it in his pocket.

...

The rest of the school day passed in a pinkish blur, tinged by all the young lovelorn hearts of the school.

"You would think," Alice said, "that if they were truly serious about it they would be happy to confess their love on any other day, but no, somehow everyone in this school only ever falls in love at Valentine's."

Fabian nodded meekly.

Alice shot him a sharp look. "Are you in love too?" she demanded.

"Maybe I am," Fabian mumbled.

"Are you serious?" Alice asked, and from her expression Fabian could tell that she was perfectly serious in asking this question. Alice was the most straightforward person he knew, and perhaps also slightly less attuned to the emotions of others and was therefore unable to grasp when a person was showing signs of being in love.

"No," Fabian lied, knowing Alice would take his answer at face value.

Somewhere, Fabian thought, his love was prancing around the school halls trailed by pink parchment hearts, bathing in the adoration of others. He wasn't too sure if what he felt for Evan Rosier was truly love, but he knew that it made his insides hurt sometimes and other times it made his insides feel all mushy so it must be a kind of love.

After he was done with prep, Fabian decided to head back to Ravenclaw Tower for an early night when Evan Rosier accosted him.

"I have got something for you, my love! Come with me to my secret lair, and we shall eat, drink and be merry!"

The secret lair turned out to be the fifth floor loo, the site of their first snogging. From under his robes, Evan pulled out a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

"For you," he said with a flourish.

Conjuring up another two glasses, he skillfully opened and poured the wine out to drink. Fabian unfurled the ribbon around the box of chocolates and dug in. Somehow, neither seemed to mind that they were in a loo.

"For your after dinner entertainment," Evan began flirtatiously, "would you like a striptease?"

Fabian choked on the chocolate truffle he had been nibbling on. "Pray tell, how is that remotely appropriate?"

"How," Evan countered with a gesture, "is this bottle of wine appropriate? Yet you seemed quite happy to quaff it all."

Fabian hemmed and hawed and failed to come up with any reasonable excuse, so he picked up the bottle of wine to observe its contents. It had a picture of a heart on its label.

"The name of this wine," Fabian said. "It's the Welsh word for heart. Is that coincidental?"

Evan shrugged. He seemed more preoccupied with preening in the mirror above the sink. "All I know is that it's from France," he said.


	12. Chapter 11

It was a picture of perfect serenity—untouched forest blooming into life after a cold, biting winter, coming into focus as the morning mist dissipated. Pools of sunlight pierced through the canopy of tall, rigid conifers with their needle-like leaves, dappling the loamy forest floor wet with a flush of morning dew on this crisp spring morning. A tiny creek gurgled merrily nearby, its crystal clear waters slipping through shards of ice that crackled and broke apart as it passed. A songbird began to sing, satisfied with the morning's breakfast offerings.

Suddenly, a disruption!

From the edge of the forest trudging footsteps were to be heard, a tiny pitter-patter of six-year old feet, and a chattering, from this same six-year old boy, who was, as it seemed, talking about something or another to an imaginary friend.

"So I went back to the pig sty this morning but found it all cleaned and the trough filled with feed and I had nothing left to do and I went to look for ma but she was headed off to work and da was in his workshop and he doesn't appreciate being interrupted much, so I headed to the farm, but Mrs Piggott told me that Gid had gone off to market with Farmer Piggott, and she honestly had no errands left for me to do, because Gid had done them all. That's why I'm here, I suppose. I don't fancy others find me useful much. I wish there was something I can do."

The six-year old boy was fiddling with a piece of straw in his hands.

"We're poor, I know that. I looked it up the dictionary so I know what it means, and I know that ma and da work so hard every day so they can put food on our table. Farmer Piggott lets us earn a bit of money too, by feeding the pigs and baby lambs but it's not a lot of work and my brother does it all so quick and he does it all. I'm the only one who sits around not earning any money. Yesterday I read one of Mrs Piggott's magazines and there was this sweet young songstress who used to be poor too, until she married some rich man, and now she has three children and lots of money. Do you think I could get married too? I could get married to a rich man and he will give ma and da loads of money and they will never have to work another day and they can read to us and tell us stories every day.

I don't know if Quidditch players are rich though, because I know that if there's anyone in the world I could marry it would be George. He's just out of the Puddlemere youth team, I know, and maybe he's a little bit older than me, but maybe, when I'm old enough for him we will fall in love and be married. Mrs Piggott keeps telling me that when I'm old enough to marry I will understand everything. I can't wait for that day! Imagine how exciting it would be, to wake up one day and know everything. How does it happen anyway? Or do you think I will find out too, on that day itself, the day I am old enough to get married."

The boy kept walking and babbling to himself, until he came upon a clearing where he saw the most upsetting sight. A clawed trap had been set by poachers, and trapped inside was a small unicorn, young enough to still gleam of gold. The baby unicorn looked exhausted from trying to pry itself out of the trap, and could barely make a sound. Where were her parents? Fabian Prewett wondered, for he thought the unicorn looked like a her.

He quickly dashed to help the unicorn, who was bleeding from where the claws of the trap dug into its skin. The trap was tightly shut, and Fabian was not able to loosen it. If only he were old enough for his own wand, he thought. He then looked around, hoping he could call for help. He then realised that he had got himself lost in the woods, and for all he knew there was no one nearby who could hear him.

Panicked and helpless, he began to cry, and then saw that the unicorn had had its young horn ruthlessly sawed off, leaving in place a jagged nub. Unicorn parts, he knew, were extremely valuable potion ingredients, and because the old way of harvesting unicorn horns, by earning the trust and friendship of unicorns, and then to take the horn only at a particular moulting age when the process would have been painless was so painstaking and slow, he had heard that poachers were increasingly choosing the expedient route of trapping and hurting these gentle creatures.

He felt so sad he reached out to touch the unicorn, who first shied away but soon realised that Fabian meant no harm. Fabian whispered to the unicorn to hang in there, and that he would find a way to keep her alive. He then asked if the unicorn was thirsty and she seemed to reply with a nod, so he immediately scampered off to get some water.

Fabian dashed to the gurgling creek, and found that he had no means of transporting the water. He then began looking for a plant with leaves large enough to hold water, but the only leaves to be found were just tiny buds yet to unfurl.

He looked down at his clothes. He knew that they could hold some water, but not for long as it would seep through. However, if he could run fast enough there would be enough left for the unicorn to sip.

And so he dashed back and forth in this manner, dipping the edge of his tunic into the creek until the water pooled to a sufficient level. At times he tripped and fell but he got back up as if nothing had happened and went back to the stream and collected water again.

He did this until it looked like the little unicorn was getting better. He then told her that he would be leaving for a short while to get help, but the farther he went the more lost he felt. It was as if the forest was shifting around him, its landscape changing so that he had no clue of the trail he took in entering. Despair began to creep into his thoughts, but then he found a healing plant that he once saw his mother grind into a powder and put on him when he was sick, and he picked off several leaves to bring to the unicorn.

It was getting dark, but from afar he could still see the soft, golden glow of the unicorn so he let the light guide him back to her. As he neared, he realised that the trap had gone and there was now a deep gash along her entire side.

Fabian nearly broke down in hysteria. It was his fault! He realised. It was his fault for leaving her side, and the poachers had returned to collect their trap and abandoned her to die. Fabian had an uneasy feeling that they probably collected her blood to sell as well, by the looks of that deep gash.

Fabian was disconsolate now. Weeping, he apologised over and over to the unicorn for abandoning her, and then he remembered the medicinal leaves and tried to put them over her wounds. He swore, in between sobs, that he would not leave her again and if those poachers ever got back he would tell them what an evil thing they had done, and they would see the error of their ways, and he would make them take her to the vet and then he would make them swear never to do any poaching ever again. He sobbed and sobbed, and then put his arms over the unicorn in a protective hug, and the unicorn nuzzled him in turn.

Tired from all the sobbing, Fabian uncontrollably fell asleep and was only awoken when the morning came and brought with it a search party of adults including his father. There was a shout that they had finally located Fabian, and even before he was fully awake he felt himself pulled from the unicorn.

Fabian began to kick and protest vehemently, for he had sworn to protect the unicorn and be by her side until she got better. His father, who had been the one to carry him off and away from the unicorn, broke it to him that the unicorn had passed away while he was sleeping.

There was no stopping Fabian now. He was beyond consolation and he screamed and kicked hysterically, accusing the adults of lying to him and that he needed to see the unicorn himself one last time. Through his blurry tears, which fell fat and warm down his freckled cheeks, he could see some other men throw a robe over the unicorn and lift her up and away. He felt like a failure, and he didn't want to be a failure. He thought to himself that if he could only get close to the unicorn she would wake again, and refused to accept anything his father tried to tell him.

He could sense his father getting angry at him, but that only made Fabian angrier at his father and kick and protest ever more vigorously. His father marched him back to their little cottage and almost accidentally threw him on the sofa out of frustration.

Fabian was wailing and accusing his dad of not letting him see the unicorn. He could see his siblings cower in a corner, for it was not often their father got angry like that.

"Do you know how much you made us worry," his father said through gritted teeth. "Running off into the woods by yourself. Look at how you've hurt yourself. Who knows what else might happen?"

Fabian refused to calm down and started lashing out at his father. He accused his father of lying to him about the unicorn, and of being a tyrant, and of being a terrible father, and begged for his mother. His father stood over him for a long while, taking all this in with clenched fists, restraining himself with all he could from disciplining his son, and it was at that moment when Fabian's mother returned from her separate search party and rushed to Fabian's side to console him with kind and gentle words.

For hours Fabian refused to eat or drink and was put to bed early. He hated his father then, for being not at all like his mother, and for always stealing his mother from him, but then his father entered the room to tuck him in.

"I'm sorry I was angry at you earlier today, Fabian," his father said, leaning close to kiss his forehead. "I shouldn't have shouted at you."

Fabian continued to pretend he was asleep, because he was still angry at his father. He felt him tuck something into the crook of his arm, and only after he was sure his father had left the room did he take a look at it. It was a carved wooden unicorn that came to life when he caressed it and it settled down next to him.


	13. Chapter 12

Molly Weasley stared at the carved wooden unicorn she held in her arm. Fabian was always such a silly boy, she thought to herself. He had this incredible compassion for all creatures great and small and sometimes caused all sorts of problems for that reason.

Ron and Hermione were over at the Burrow for the usual Sunday roast, and they were trying to pry information out of Molly on the sly, without revealing to her the reasons for this investigation. They had been digging though the archives in the Auror department and found some old investigative papers hinting at suspicious activity on Fabian Prewett's part, and Ron Weasley was beginning to feel that this particular uncle of his was not at all what he had thought him to be. If it came to light that Fabian did indeed have unsavory connections to the Death Eaters it could spell the end of his heroic reputation alongside his brother Gideon Prewett.

"What kind of problems did he cause?" Hermione prodded.

"Oh, I don't want to blame him at all, because he had such a pure heart, but he really could have been a pain if he wanted! I remember that time he decided to become vegetarian..."

"What happened there?"

"It was Christmas lunch and ma and da had prepared a feast for us, and considering what we usually had it was a wonderful feast. Alas, one of the main ingredients was this pig your Uncle Fabian had grown extremely fond of, and after finding out that his Christmas lunch was consisted of this pig, who was like a best friend to him, he went on a hunger strike for days and oh, the trouble! Every one of us tried countless ways to get him to eat again, and it was only after we convinced him that vegetables could not feel pain and were not murdered in cooking.

Now that you mention it," Molly continued. "It was the only other time I remember da getting as angry as he did with the unicorn incident."

Ron mentioned that his grandfather sounded like a scary man, not the kind one would hope to cross at all.

Molly shook her head in reply. He was not like this often, she claimed, and he was a genuinely good father when he could be. He told the best stories and tried his best to take care of all his children.

"Stories?" Ron said, unable to reconcile the stern, stentorian image with that of a fanciful storyteller. "What kind of stories?"


	14. Chapter 13

"Once upon a time, there was a dragon, red like the one in our flag, with scales that gleamed like rubies when the sun shone. Awoken by the miners from the mountains up above, she roamed the valleys of Glamorgan, where your mother's family lived. Your mother's brothers hunted down this dragon and locked her in a deep dungeon, which they later threw me in, because her family didn't like me."

Geraint Prewett looked into the eyes of his three young children, cuddled up against each other on the sofa across the fireplace.

"What did you do with the dragon, daddy?" the eldest boy asked. "Did you kill it?" He saw the younger boy, the youngest of the family, shrink behind a cushion in fear.

Geraint poked at the fireplace with a poker, releasing a few dramatic sparks in the air. A slow smile crept into his face. "No," he began. "I saved the dragon, the dragon saved your mum, and your mum saved me."

...

[1945]

"Hellooooo nurse, I think I have a bit of a pain in the lower region. Mind having a look down there?"

Rhiannon Gower looked up from her clipboard, fixing a hard glare on the soldier. "I'm a medic, and no, I will not look at your crotch." She moved onto the next patient, a youth barely come of age, with his limbs bandaged up most pitifully.

"What's up, doc?" the collection of bandages uttered, attempting to break into a half grin.

Rhiannon picked up the clipboard at this patient's foot. "Geraint Prewett," she said. "Welsh?" she said.

"Aye, from the Wye Valley."

"You don't look nearly old enough. Why did you join the Forces?"

"Sister, I was a poet but they've got no use for poets in war."

Rhiannon seemed to have no patience for chitchat. "How long have you been out there?"

"Not long, just two weeks in. Doubt I've had the time to get shell-shocked but have you seen what goes on in the trenches?" Geraint's face contorted into an expression of wide-eyed horror.

"I've been a medic here for months."

That was the extent of Geraint Prewett's stint on the western front, for he was soon after sent back to old blighty. A short while after, Grindelwald announced surrender.

Geraint recovered well enough, much better than all the others who saw more death and devastation, better than those with images seared forever in their mind they would never recover from. He was not a violent man for the most part and would never have thrived in battle. Who knows what state he might have ended up in had he stuck around for more? But with what he saw from his brief two weeks the words ran dry in him and he had to make a living some other way. He had also kept in contact with the pretty medic from the war and she mentioned that she might know someone who was looking for a groundskeeper.

He went for the job, and then found that the pretty medic was the only daughter of a well-known family and that he would be working on the grounds of her family castle.

He had some qualms about the arrangement but just as soon came to ignore it as he began a secret love affair with Rhiannon Gower. This went on for several years without much in the way.

However, it came to pass that her family decided it was high time they married her off to a suitable man, who was strategically chosen, by her three brothers and her grandmother and her mother, for his family fortune. All the old families were on a downward spiral, financially speaking, and all were scampering to trade high birth for wealthy connections.

This man was to arrive on invitation of the family, who were looking to put forth their daughter as a suitable wife. There was no expense spared in the preparation for his arrival, and the highlight of the trip was to be a dragon hunt, followed by a hunt ball and so on.

Rhiannon, who had absolutely no intention of marrying a stranger, much less a stranger who, by all accounts, was the opposite of what she looked for in a partner, naturally reacted with stubbornness and was uncooperative.

She told Geraint that she had decided to elope with him before her hand was promised to another. Geraint, seized by a sudden bout of rationality, tried to argue that theirs was an affair that was not built to last, and if she should change her mind about the stranger he would quietly resign and go away. Rhiannon grew annoyed, and said she would never let him get away with breaking her heart, so he should really get packing and ready to leave at any moment.

As is the beloved sport of the ruling class, as old George had done all those years ago, dragon hunting was the ultimate show of sporting prowess and _noblesse oblige_, as wizards and witches dressed for the field and set off on flying horses, armed with enchanted weapons to slay the monstrous, ugly beasts and protect the Muggles and peasantry from harm.

A few issues beg consideration here. Dragons were all too content to keep to their mountains in undisturbed slumber, but recent mining activity woke them and forced them out of their homes. The proceeds of the mining only served to enrich the already rich, and their growing display of affluence only served to bait the dragons into fury. In turn the rich and privileged turned to dragon hunting for sport, which only entrenched their privileged position as they began to call themselves heroes and protectors.

On this occasion, with much for show, a magnificent dragon was captured in the hunt and beat into submission. She had all the markings of a Welsh Green, save that she had a rare genetic quirk that meant she was born red.

This dragon was imprisoned in the castle dungeons while the family began celebrations in honour of the invited guest. In addition, a nest of gleaming, golden dragon eggs were found, and these were polished and set on the dining table as the perfect centrepiece. Over dinner, Rhiannon could no longer stand being talked about as if she were property to be handed off after a successful contract negotiation and abruptly declared that she had no intention of marrying one she did not choose.

Her brothers began to talk over her, assuring the guest that she was probably in a silly mood, because that's how women are, they never mean what they say, and Rhiannon grew so incensed with rage she stood up at the table, accidentally kicking into it and tipping the soup tureen over. The dragon eggs wobbled from the shock, and began rolling to the edge of the table. Sensing danger, Rhiannon swiftly dove to collect them before they fell off. Hot soup began to seep into the tablecloth and down onto various laps, prompting a few restrained howls of pain. Rhiannon declared that all this while she had been having an affair with the groundskeeper, whom she had every intention to marry tonight after elopement.

"My dear sister," her eldest brother said. "Your faculties must be impaired because you have just ruined any chance of your escape."

Another brother smirked. "Arrest the groundskeeper, and throw him into the dungeon with the dragon," he ordered.

Rhiannon withdrew her wand and prepared to duel with her brother but found herself unexpectedly disarmed by her mother.

"You have been most unladylike," her mother began. "You have done nothing but inconvenienced our guest and you have put forth a most unattractive disposition. Go now, to your room, before you further embarrass yourself."

"Fine," she said. "I will go to my room. I will go to my room and prepare to leave this house forever. I will be gone before the night is up, you mark my words!"

She stormed up into her room, but as she slammed the room door shut behind her she saw a burst of deep purple light at its seams and realised she had been locked in by one of her family.

She quickly ran to the window before it could be locked by enchantment, but her second brother flew past on a broom and he hit her with a stunning spell and shut the window on her.

She fell back onto her bed, refusing to be defeated, and tried to pull her thoughts together in order to hatch an escape plan. Hatch...she thought, suddenly remembering that wedged in the crook of her arm were two golden dragon eggs. She stared at the eggs, wondering how the dragonlings inside were coming along. If they were due to hatch now, she thought, she could have them burn through the door or even the wrought iron windows and she could make a run for it.

After several minutes of staring, she decided that the eggs weren't going to hatch after all, and went about packing a suitcase of her favorite things.

...

For no comprehensible reason he had been seized and he now found himself being dragged to the dungeons. The dungeons were dark and damp and he could barely see a thing, much less his captors.

There was an unlocking, and he was brusquely thrown to the ground before the captors quickly slammed the gate shut and dashed away as if running for their lives.

Warning bells began to sound in his head. There must be something mightily unpleasant down here, he concluded. He looked around and saw slivers of moonlight shine through a vent. He moved towards the light, hoping it would help him see. He barely took one step before he tripped and fell over a hard boulder. He felt around for the boulder to steady himself, and found that the boulder had these strange ridges that felt like scales and then it dawned upon him—he had been shut in with the dragon they caught earlier today.

When he looked up he saw the glint of a giant eye, large as a dinner plate. Even in the sparse light the eyes shone like yellow sapphires.

"I'm sorry!" Geraint exclaimed, throwing his hands up in surrender. "I didn't mean to trip over you."

The dragon seemed unimpressed and snorted dismissively.

"I'm so sorry," Geraint said again. He then sat down on the spot, but found he had lowered himself into a puddle of indeterminate liquid.

The dragon continued snorting in a supercilious manner.

Uncomfortable with the silence, Geraint began talking. "I'm sorry you don't like me much, but I'm stuck with you for now, unless you decide to eat me." He belatedly realised his error and began to laugh nervously. "But you don't intend to eat me, do you?"

The dragon made no reply.

"Aww," Geraint began to coo. "You're not in pain are you?" Unthinkingly, he reached out to pat the dragon in a comforting gesture.

At his touch, the dragon recoiled and began to cough in a hacking manner.

"Oh no," Geraint began to fret. "Are you alright, love?" He patted the dragon ever more fervently.

The dragon began to make a whining sound.

"Oh dear, oh deary me," Geraint babbled uselessly. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

The dragon bobbed its large reptilian head.

"You understand me!" Geraint exclaimed, upon which the dragon seemed to shake its head.

"Is there anything I can do?" Geraint pressed. The dragon bobbed its head up and down.

"Yes? Yes?" Geraint nodded enthusiastically.

The dragon bobbed its head up and down more vigorously this time. Confused, Geraint moved closer to see if there was anything he could do. When he stood in front of the dragon, he felt a damp gust of cold air.

He pondered for a while. It seemed to him that dragons, who could breathe fire from the nostrils, would not produce damp and cold air. He tried to look up the dragon's nostril. The dragon responded by turning up her nostril for a better angle, so Geraint stuck his head inside.

His hands reached up into a damp, spongy texture, which he began to feel around. He then realised that Everwetting Sponges had been stuffed up the dragon's nostrils to keep her from breathing fire. Maybe the dragon had been snorting in discomfort after all!

With a firm grasp, he tried to dislodge the sponge. He heaved and yanked and finally it came out with a pop. He gave the dragon a triumphant grin, holding the Everwetting Sponge out for her to see. The dragon rolled her head around so that he could work on the other nostril, and he dove in for the second extraction.

When he was done, the dragon gave a huge sneeze, which splattered Geraint with large droplets of water, and then she sneezed again, a drier sneeze this time around, with a lick of flame darting out of her nostril, enough to singe Geraint's flame-coloured hair.

He drew back instinctively, and was about to propose an escape plan when the dragon breathed into the vent, and then flapped her large, leathery wings, which were still bound by chains.

"All right, all right," Geraint huffed, and then went about trying to loosen the chains. Before he could even get the chains properly off, the dragon blew a hole into the ceiling and flew upwards with such a force that the chains were pulled from the dungeon walls. With another huge flap of the wings, the dragon took off far beyond him, and Geraint realised too late that he should have hitched a ride out, because the dungeon was too deep for him to climb out and the escape hole was in the ceiling.

...

Her bags packed, Rhiannon went back to devising her escape plan. She lay on her bed above the covers, still in her evening dress, with her hands folded tightly across her chest.

Suddenly, there was a loud crashing sound and she felt the foundations of the castle beginning to give way. This was her opportunity! She leapt out of bed and grabbed her suitcase. She looked at her doorframe, and with another crash it went askew and the door popped off its hinges. She swung the door open, only to be faced with her eldest brother, so she swung a fist in his face and grabbed his wand. She ran down the hall, surrounded by cries that the dragon had gone loose.

The dragon! She thought. Her first conclusion was that somehow Geraint had found a way to break out of the dungeons and he was probably riding atop her, hair blowing suavely in the wind. She ran to the nearest window, and with a blast from her wand she sent out a signal to catch the dragon's eye.

The dragon was swooping around the castle, burning turrets into the ground. The chains that had bound her were now flailing around loosely, thrashing into the castle walls and causing much damage. It seemed the dragon was not content to simply leave, but was intent on exacting revenge.

Or was it? Rhiannon remembered the unhatched eggs that were still sitting on her bed. The dragon wasn't trying to wreak senseless destruction, she must have been looking for her eggs!

She dashed back towards her room. At the doorway her brother, who was just coming to, reached out and tried to trip her, but she deftly leapt to avoid his outstretched arm and decided to give him a kick for good measure.

She scooped up the eggs, but the ceiling was crumbling all around her and if the eggs were to get broken, Lord knows how the dragon would react. Rhiannon looked down at her suitcase. If she could fit the eggs inside they would be safe for now...

But her suitcase was full. Never mind, she thought, and flung it open and began dumping its contents. Her beautifully crafted robes were thrown to the floor, and her favourite books, and the rest of her belongings until she came to her precious violin, which was in a case of its own. She took the violin case out and the suitcase was now empty. She put the eggs inside and closed it and, with her violin case in the other hand, got up and left the room.

She rushed down the stairs until she hit her next obstacle, her third brother, who shot a spell at her. She raised her suitcase—then stopped herself—and raised her violin case to deflect the blow. The violin case shattered and her violin, an incredibly rare piece of art handmade by-oh hell, she thought. It's gone now. Finished. Best not dwell.

She got to the ground floor and out of the castle and opened the suitcase to show the dragon that her eggs were safe.

The dragon began to swoop down for her eggs, and it was then Rhiannon noticed that Geraint was not heroically riding atop her like she had imagined. The dragon had reached the ground and was about to collect her eggs...

And then Rhiannon slammed the suitcase shut, staring straight at the dragon.

"Where is he?" she asked in a steady tone. She could feel the heat from the dragon's breath slam into her.

The dragon stared back at her.

"Take me to him," Rhiannon demanded. "And then I will let you have your eggs."

The dragon huffed, possibly out of indignation, and then lowered itself. Rhiannon mounted in one swift motion, taking the suitcase with her, and then they were off.

It wasn't a very long journey as the dragon merely dipped back into the dungeon, where Rhiannon found her lover sitting dejectedly, head propped up by one hand. He also looked to be covered in snot and his lovely hair seemed singed.

"Hop on," Rhiannon commanded imperiously.

At her voice, Geraint looked up with an expression of such joy she broke into a grin herself.

"You saved me!" Geraint simpered, clambering on behind her and burying his head into her hair. "And you too!" he said to the dragon, with a little pat.

The dragon snorted and hurtled into the sky, dodging the beams of spells cast to hinder her escape.

Far below them, Rhiannon's grandmother was screeching ferociously. "Curses!" she yelled. "Curses!" They began to laugh, for they believed themselves safe now, but then they heard her words.

"A curse upon your heads!" she continued. "A curse is upon you, for you have defied the wishes of your family to seek the one you love. For this freedom you enjoy was not yours to have and for this reason you steal from your children. May your offspring never possess the freedom you had. May your sons and daughters never marry the one they truly love..."


	15. Chapter 14

"Yes!" Ron exclaimed. "They ran away from evil and lived happily ever after!"

Molly sighed. She had omitted the part about the curse in her retelling of the story to her children, just as her father had omitted telling her about this curse until he was on his deathbed and then it was only in his dying breath. From her father to her the burden became hers to carry, and came to bear down on her most bitterly on the death of her two brothers.

Ron looked at her, concerned. "They did live happily ever after, did they?" he asked, seeking an answer he had a feeling he might not find.

"For a while, yes," Molly replied. "For as long as your grandmother was alive we were as happy as we could be. It wasn't easy for them, because they had eloped and your grandmother was cut off from the family inheritance and your grandfather was poor to begin with."

"If all of you were a happy family," Ron said, "why then did you and dad have to elope, too?"

Molly gave Ron a bemused look, revealing that it was one of her fonder memories, though not without some bittersweetness.

...

It is incredibly difficult, not having any resources, to raise a family well. Rhiannon was blacklisted by her family, lost all her former connections and was even expelled from Healing school. From then, they moved from town to town, taking whatever job they could find there. In this way they lived frugally, until one day the news came to them that an elderly writing mentor of Geraint's had recently passed, and his old cottage was to be rented out at a cheap rate in order to pay off the mountain of debt he left behind.

It was also at this time that Rhiannon began to find regular employment from the Muggle world as a violin teacher. Geraint, who, besides a love of literature, was also good with his hands, took up woodworking, building bookshelves for the nearby town. With their living arrangement secured and income trickling in slowly but surely, they decided to have a child.

Now, neither had forgotten the curse Rhiannon's grandmother put on them, so their decision to have a child did not come lightly. They both agreed that they would do all in their power to break this curse, so that this child should find the same happiness in love they enjoyed.

The child was born, a sweet-faced baby girl, who had a bubbling laugh and a kind heart and brought her patents much joy. They lived as a happy trio until, as accidents of this sort occasionally happen, Rhiannon was pregnant with another.

Another soon turned out to be two, for Rhiannon was found to be carrying twins. There was a private fear that this was much more than they could handle, but dear Molly was so pleased with the prospect of younger siblings they decided that they would find a way to cope.

And so it was until the day Rhiannon was diagnosed with dragon pox. The loss of one source of income made the burden of household expenses ever larger, although thanks to the Magical Heath Service, Rhiannon was not denied the healthcare she needed and medical bills were not a problem.

Rhiannon never recovered from the dragon pox and it ultimately led to her death. Geraint took the news especially hard. It was as if a part of him had died as well, and he was never to recover from the depression that stuck with him after.

He was, not to say, a terrible father, but any person in the throes of mental illness could scarce be able to cope on a daily basis. By that time, Molly had begun her education at Hogwarts and wrote often to her little brothers, asking them to be patient and understanding with their father, who could spend days on end huddled up under his duvet, locked in his room.

The quality of his work declined too, when the pressure of having rent and bills to pay became so great he had no choice but to drag himself to the workshop to haphazardly cobble some planks together.

It went on and on, falling into a soulless, dreary routine, until things came to a head one day when a stranger knocked on the door.

It was not just a stranger, but the wealthy wizard Rhiannon's parents had wanted her to marry!

The wizard stepped into the house, surveying the shabby surroundings. He could barely conceal his smugness at the plight of this family. He revealed himself to be the ultimate owner of the cottage as well as the surrounding land, and, in a show of false magnanimity meant to emphasise his control over them, he declared that he would spare this family their debt and award them the title to this cottage if they should give him what he had been denied all those years ago—a wife.

Yes, he had heard that Rhiannon had long left this world but it was not Rhiannon he wanted, for even if she had lived she would now be a ghastly old hag. He wanted for himself a young and pretty wife, and he had heard that they had a daughter, who was by and large rumoured to be the school belle.

The words incited Geraint into life, as he became animated by a violent anger. He would never promise his daughter away as if she were chattel and he would never let his daughter, his precious firstborn, become the unhappy wife of a greedy old man who was sure to not accord her due respect.

However, this wizard then brandished a piece of parchment in his face, a contract signed by the late literary mentor, so poorly drawn and exploitative as to implicate any residents of the land no matter if they had not signed it themselves.

Geraint had no prior knowledge of this contract, but knew he had to act decisively. To stall for time, he informed the wizard that his daughter had not yet come of age, for her seventeenth birthday had not yet come. The wizard eyed him beadily and stated that he had the patience, and would return in just over a month, on Molly's seventeenth birthday, to claim her for himself.

It was then Geraint felt like an absolute failure, for that which he had agreed with Rhiannon to prevent was coming true. He had spent all this time moping and hating himself and he had neglected to care for his children when they needed him, and he was about to turn into something utterly reprehensible, should this unholy union proceed under his watch.

He wrote to Molly in school, informing her in no uncertain words about the danger she was in. He had spent several hours thinking of possible solutions, and the only one he had been able to come up with was of uprooting the entire family to a faraway place such as Australia.

Molly replied that she would give it some thought on her side. The thought of dropping out of school to be married to some stranger whom she hated the sound of was causing a great anxiety, and her sometime boyfriend, Arthur Weasley, noticed her worry.

Trusting Arthur enough to confide in him, she told Arthur of the conundrum she faced. Arthur, without a thought, suggested that the two of them could get married first, in which case the villainous old wizard would be thwarted.

Molly chided Arthur for being ridiculous, for they were both still in school. But as soon as she dismissed it she began to realise it might be worth consideration after all. They had been going out for the better part of two years, and she realised that her ideal future was one in which Arthur featured strongly.

They discussed it over several nights, and then they decided that this was the option they both could live with. They made plans for Geraint to go up to Hogsmeade, so that they could inform him of this plan and ask for his blessing, and also to do so in a manner that would not be intercepted by that fiend.

Fortunately, Geraint and Arthur took well to each other and he found Arthur a respectful person who would not shirk his responsibilities to Molly and any children they saw fit to have.

He agreed for them elope from Hogwarts on this school night to rendezvous at a small chapel in Arthur's hometown, where they would be married at the stroke of midnight.

The twenty ninth of November rolled around and after most others had gone to sleep, Arthur and Molly quietly roused to make their escape. Arthur was nearly thwarted by patrolling prefects as he tiptoed down the hall. Bellatrix Black and Rodolphus Lestrange were on the night patrol, and they were discussing various ways to inflict punishmenton students for breaking school rules. Arthur jumped behind a suit of armour to hide, painfully aware that precious time was being lost here.

Somehow, Black and Lestrange would not leave the hall! Their imagined punishments for students were also getting increasingly sadistic. Arthur was beginning to get cramps in his arms from holding an awkward position wedged between the suit of armour and the wall. Next to him, through the open window, in blew a gust of chilly autumn wind down the hall.

That's it! He waited until Black and Lestrange had their backs turned, and then quickly shot a small spark out the window, an emergency call to let Molly know he would be late.

A short while after, he saw Molly speeding towards the window from the outside on a broom. If she came any closer the prefects would spot her! He felt around his pockets for his wand, and discovered an uneaten exploding gobstopper. A diversion! He tried to unwrap the gobstopper as silently as possible, which in the quiet night seemed to insist on crinkling noisily. He gave it a hearty lick, to activate the exploding properties, and then flung it in the general direction of the prefects.

Several seconds later, it exploded in a giant puff of strawberry-flavoured powder, allowing him the one chance to leap out of the window unnoticed. He fell into the cold autumn night, air whooshing past at an alarming speed, but he was not worried. He knew with certainty that Molly would catch him on time, which she did as if this was the most mundane thing in the world.

They arrived at the village chapel where Geraint and a small gathering of Arthur's family had showed up. Arthur's mother had dug up her old wedding dress for Molly to wear, and Arthur's brothers all chipped in with a different component of a dress robe.

Geraint slipped off his wedding ring, which he had never once taken off before, and together with Rhiannon's old ring, which he had also kept with him since she died, passed them over to the priest for Molly and Arthur to be married with.

The wedding ceremony was about to begin when there came the ominous sound of a carriage coming to a stop outside the chapel.

That dastardly villain had turned up! Dressed in all finery, he proudly took out the contract and announced that he was here to see it fulfilled.

There was a hush, and then Geraint spoke up. He challenged the cursed wizard to a duel, that he could only do it over his dead body.

The wizard was all too happy to agree. He proved to be a formidable opponent, well skilled in the art of the duel. Meanwhile, Geraint strove to take the duel outside, and motioned to the Weasley family that they should see that Arthur and Molly were wed before the duel was finished.

The wizard began to taunt him. He told Geraint that he heard that he was useless in the war, stupidly injuring himself even before he took on a real foe. Geraint had no experience of battle to boast of, and it was foolish of him to think he could stand up to someone of his rank. How could he even put up a fight?

Geraint countered with all his heart that he would show that dastardly villain what a fight truly meant. To fight, he said, is not to wreak violence and destruction upon hapless victims for the sake of showing power. To fight is to believe in something so strongly as to do anything possible to vindicate that belief. And what Geraint fought for here, what he truly believed in, was for the right of his children to marry one of their own choosing.

From the chapel there was the sound of a tune being played on the organ. He was not dueling to prove a point, Geraint proceeded to tell him. He was merely holding the wizard off for as long as necessary to get Molly and Arthur wed.

Thwarted, the villainous wizard began to scream, and then jumped into his carriage and blazed off swearing revenge upon revenge. Geraint, wounded, fell on the floor dramatically just as a happy crowd burst from the chapel.

He was rushed to the hospital, and while they were there, it transpired that the dastardly wizard was involved in a deadly collision with muggle aircraft as he had whipped his horses into a frenzy spurred on by his rage. Thankfully, his flying horses survived and were adopted into hospital service, where they found a much kinder home.

Unfortunately, Molly and Arthur had to return to Hogwarts before dawn, but, due to Geraint's hospitalisation, Molly would be able to seek leave from school to visit him the next day.

They arrived back at Hogwarts at around four in the morning, and went separate ways to sneak back into dorm, which Molly did with success, but Arthur was caught by Apollyon Pringle and sent to detention the next day.

Professor Dumbledore was very sympathetic and granted Molly, along with her two brothers, who were just in their first year, leave from school to see their ailing father.

In the hospital, Healers informed her that Geraint's condition had deteriorated and they should prepare for the worst. Gideon and Fabian had no knowledge of the previous night's events and burst upon tears at the frightful sight, so a mediwitch herded them out of the room to calm down. It was then Geraint told Molly of her great-grandmother's curse and asked her to look after her brothers. He apologised for being a terrible father and for an incorrigible weakness, for if Rhiannon had lived and he died first she would not have crumbled like this, and confessed that he had been entertaining thoughts of suicide until a month ago. Bitterly, he wept to Molly and begged that she would think better of him than just a mentally-ill father.

It was then Molly began to cry, and, holding her father's hands, rough and ragged from years of woodworking, said she felt sorry that he thought of himself that way. He was not for once just her mentally-ill father but many things to her, some of it good and some of it imperfect but he was wholly a human being she loved and respected, especially after what he did for her last night.

Geraint told her that he wished he could think of himself that way too, and he also saw that Molly had blossomed into maturity. Most other people reach a late stage of adulthood before they finally accept that their parents are neither supreme heroes nor reprehensible villains, but just as raw and in need of forgiveness as any other. Molly he could entrust with the care of their family.

At this point, the mediwitch ushered the little Prewett twins, who had ceased sobbing, back into the room, where they said their last goodbyes.


	16. Chapter 15

Having come across some recently unclassified reports regarding the conduct of Fabian Prewett during his time in the Auror service, Ron Weasley was increasingly worried that he had a wayward uncle who fell to the dark side.

Hermione suggested that they should pursue this further, and on their regular trips to the Burrow for family dinners they asked Molly if she ever noticed that Fabian had any Slytherin friends.

It was at this dinner that Ginny announced she was selected for the national team in the upcoming Quidditch Euros. She was immediately congratulated by all her brothers in the typical Weasley way, which is to say she found herself buried under five sweaty men in a pile of enthusiastic hugs.

Harry looked around modestly, and made a remark that BAHWAGs were banned from the training camp and it would be a long lonely summer for him and the children.

When they were clearing up the dishes, Molly suddenly told Hermione that she recalled this particular episode where Fabian seemed to be hanging around the Black family quite a bit.

"Was it in his fifth year?" Hermione asked in reply.

"It was after fifth year. In fact, it took place at the time of the Quidditch Euros as well. Gideon had been selected to train with the Cannons all summer and he won some tickets to the Euros as a bonus for being the most diligent player in the youth squad. He took the whole family along, and it was quite a lark. It was the last time Wales managed to get into the final, and nearly all of Hogwarts had turned out in support..."

...

The seas began to part and a great ship burst out of the seas, breaking the horizon. With an unmistakable honk it steered into the Port of Genoa. As it neared, it became apparent it was not so much a ship as it was a giant luxury yacht. The ship went into dock, and out spilled a colourful tangle of the wizarding world's most storied families.

The yacht had been chartered by Edward Tonks, (yes, of the Salem Tonks), who, as everyone knew, was heir to that vast New World fortune. Born to an American father and an English mother, he spoke with a sophisticated mid-Atlantic accent that charmed the socks off Cygnus and Druella Black. It was readily apparent that he was in pursuit of their second daughter's hand in marriage, and his flawless reputation in Hogwarts, first as a gracious Slytherin prefect, then the Head Boy, filled Cygnus and Druella with an excitement that this man should be so perfect for their daughter.

He had spared no expense, so that even members of the famously exclusive Lestrange clan were willing to join the festivities onboard. Some might say that this was an intolerable gathering of the upper classes, conspicuously showing off their privilege in this most glorious of cities.

Italy was host to the 1972 European Quidditch Championship, and Genoa was host to the final. Wales were an unexpectedly good team this year, barging into the finals where they were to face the ruthless Yugoslavia.

The city, once awash with culture, was now awash with Quidditch fans from the British Isles and the Eastern Bloc, bringing with it some political tension as students of Hogwarts and the impenetrable Durmstrang clashed over values.

One day, some Durmstrangians were found to be bullying a small Hufflepuff boy barely out of first year. By chance, the person who discovered this act of bullying was one Gideon Prewett, and when he sought to interfere the Durmstrang students challenged him to a Quidditch match. Gideon Prewett, something of a Quidditch maniac, agreed before learning too late that the impromptu match would be officiated by Nemanja Illic, keeper of the Yugoslavian National Team, which meant there could be referee bias. Things got worse when it was rumoured that Nemaja Illic was the brother of one of the Durmstrang team.

Charged with assembling a team in just fifteen minutes, Gideon ran off in search of his fellow Hogwarts students. Having given much thought in his spare time to the formation of a Hogwarts dream team, he was beyond overjoyed at being able to actually assemble it.

He knew he wanted Frank Longbottom and Dorcas Meadowes as Chasers, alongside, humbly, himself. Marlene McKinnon and Alistair Thomas as Beaters, Evan Rosier as Seeker and as for Keeper, well, he'd take anyone he could find.

Marlene was easy to find, as was Frank. Both then went off to spread word of the informal match, gathering the rest of the Hogwarts crowd for support. Gideon ran off into his tent to fetch his broomstick, where he saw his brother suddenly sit up in alarm, inexplicably without a shirt, patting around his duvet nervously.

"Golly, Gid, please do not dash unannounced into our room," Fabian moaned.

"No time to lose!" Gideon huffed. "I've got a team to assemble!"

"By gosh, is two-a-side Quidditch so urgent?" Fabian asked sarcastically.

"No time to lose!" Gideon repeated mindlessly. "It's Hogwarts vs Durmstrang in the match of the century!" He emitted a high-pitched whoop of excitement. "I've got a team to assemble! Full-strength, my dear brother!"

Gideon then dashed out of the room muttering about tactics to himself.

There was a rustling from under Fabian's duvet. Evan Rosier emerged, hair wildly askew, also curiously unclothed. "A Quidditch match? Team Hogwarts?" he exclaimed. His eyes began to dart about frantically.

Before Fabian could even sigh, dismayed by all this interruption, Evan Rosier had leapt out of bed and was frantically reversing his disrobement, carelessly and indiscreetly running out of the tent, calling out to Gideon.

Gideon whipped his head around to see a dishevelled-looking Evan Rosier running after him. Where did he come from? Gideon wondered. He had been trying in vain to find Hogwarts' star Seeker and here he was running after him.

"I hear you are assembling a team," Rosier wheezed.

Suspicion danced about Gideon's mind. There was something not right in the way—never mind, he thought. He had Rosier on his team and they were ready to go.

The final team, comprising of two from each house except Ravenclaw, who had their Keeper Kim Gladstone as their sole representative, gathered at the training field for kick-off.

It was at this point they faced the Durmstrang team and realised they were probably, hopelessly, ridiculously outmatched player for player. The sheer physicality of the Durmstrang team was enough to beat them into submission, and truth be told the House of Ravenclaw was quite rubbish at the whole sporting lark and their Keeper was getting thoroughly thrashed.

It was with embarrassment that Fabian, who was vociferously lending his support, realised that his house was letting the school down. To his surprise, he found Alice Giggs in the crowd, yelling at their house Keeper to keep on trying. He sidled up to her and expressed his shock at seeing her here. Was she not vehemently anti-Quidditch? Why should she deign to grace such an event with her divine omniscience?

Alice told him to shut up and support the team. Besides, she said, her mother was Italian and the event presented a wonderful opportunity for her mum to take on a respectable job as a tour guide.

Team Hogwarts was really struggling out there. Fabian looked up into the sky with despair as he saw his brother get slammed into, yet again in an obvious foul that the ref didn't call out.

Fabian hurled an insult at the ref for doing a shoddy job, accompanied with a rude gesture. He looked at the scoreboard, which was a dismal sight. All around him, Hogwarts students were gathering round in horror, until that young Hufflepuff boy, the purported bully victim, begged for all of them to begin singing the school song.

There was a sudden burst of fervour as the mass of Hogwarts students broke into discordant tune. It seemed to throw Team Durmstrang off its rhythm, as they looked slightly alarmed by the cacophony of voices below. The students grew ever wilder in their individual renditions of the song, until a deep, low harmony began to cut through it. Durmstrang were singing their school song back at them! And they sounded marvellous, like a singular deep boom echoing in the mountains. This show of unity, and perhaps uniformity, really incited the Hogwarts student body further, and they began screeching in their multitude. Fabian turned to his side in amazement as he heard, for the first time in his life, Alice's voice in song. Alice Giggs! Singing! Alice Giggs, the self-confessed oxymoronic non-singing Welshperson, who, at every single year, mouthed all the words voicelessly at the start of term in the Great Hall. Alice saw him gawping at her in shock, and she gave him such a wide grin and grabbed his arm so tightly Fabian thought she must have been possessed. But her excitement was infectious and Fabian resumed singing, swinging an arm around her. Alice was so giddy and unlike herself that she put her other arm around the student on her other side, and soon all Hogwarts began to link arms and sing in one big caterwauling disharmony. There was a swell of emotion that rose and rose until they began to drown out the regimented Durmstrang chant, and then there was this one point, a point of pure magic, where all the Hogwarts contingent hit the same note at the same time, and they began to sustain it and in that moment Kim Gladstone made the most spectacular save of her entire Quidditch career to keep the score 90-340, Gideon Prewett threaded the Quaffle through the narrowest gap in the Durmstrang defence to Frank Longbottom who did a feign and a quick nudge to Dorcas Meadowes who slotted it neatly into goal, and at the same time Alistair Thomas sent a Bludger to Marlene McKinnon, who hit it onward into the path of the Durmstrang Seeker in hot pursuit of Evan Rosier, who scooped up the snitch that was fluttering within sight.

Pandemonium broke out. There was a pitch invasion by the Hogwarts contingent, overcome with emotion at this hallowed victory. Durmstrang, for the most part, withdrew swiftly, all while claiming that the victory had no credibility because the match was too informal for it to matter anyway and that only people unaccustomed to success would celebrate as they did.


	17. Chapter 16

The actual championship final was slightly underwhelming in light of Hogwarts' glorious victory. Both teams took an overly cautious approach so there was not much excitement, and both teams were also evenly matched in a deadlock that depended on the capture of the Golden Snitch for the final outcome.

With luck, Wales nudged it and won the match to much relief. Quidditch maniacs like Gideon Prewett had staked so much emotionally he was just glad it turned out the way he hoped for.

After the trophy presentation, the Wales captain mentioned that she had heard of an impromptu Quidditch match that happened because Hogwarts stood up to an act of bullying, and that she would like to meet the person who made it happen, whereupon Gideon nearly swooned into Fabian's arms.

Soon, people started chanting for Gideon Prewett. Gideon, all sheepish smiles and shuffling feet, said he felt embarrassed because this was wholly a team effort, so then people began chanting "Hogwarts Hogwarts Hogwarts" and Gideon recovered from his swooning to reach out to Marlene McKinnon with a puppylike expression. Marlene smiled, and beckoned the rest of Team Hogwarts to follow them, and meanwhile Evan Rosier beamed at Fabian with the proudest expression of his life. Gideon picked out Caradoc Dearborn, the bullied first year Hufflepuff, and the group of them went up the podium to a host of cheers.

Gideon was asked to say something, as someone cast the Sonorous on him, to which he began, looking like he was on the verge of tears, "yeah... uh... so..."

It was at this point Marlene McKinnon grabbed his face and kissed him and the entire stadium started whooping.

"Oh god... Merlin..." Gideon babbled audibly, the Sonorous charm still broadcasting his incoherence for all to hear. With a great big gasp, he collapsed into a shaking pile of tears.

The Wales team captain found Gideon's emotional outburst particularly endearing, and went on to hug him and the rest of the Hogwarts team for a job well done.


	18. Chapter 17

Evan Rosier begged Fabian to join him on a tour of Europe after the Quidditch Euros. He put it across that the incremental charge of hosting Fabian was barely noticeable, when they would be sharing a room and such, so Fabian need not feel guilty about letting him foot the bill.

Fabian dawdled, pointing out that he had no way of explaining his absence or how he could afford such a vacation without revealing the nature of their relationship to his sister and brother.

Evan, in turn, put on a quick succession of pleading faces, ranging from puppy eyes to a spoiled princess pout. Fabian eventually gave in and said he would come up with a suitable excuse. As they were all packing to leave, he pulled Alice aside to ask if she would lend support to his fabrications that her mother was in need of extra research guides on the tour and Alice had suggested he come into the temporary employ of the tour company. Alice agreed on the terms that he revealed to her his true itinerary, to which she responded with such goggly eyes if she opened them any wider her eyeballs would simply roll out of their sockets.

The harmless fib settled, Fabian bade goodbye to his family as he saw them off at the Portkey. Shortly after, he packed his bags and said his byes to dear Alice, planting a large, wet kiss on her round, rosy cheeks.

He was about to set sail on the _Ulysses_, the largest recreational yacht this side of the wizarding world. He would spend the next fortnight on the high seas of the Mediterranean, sailing from port to port, ensconced in opulence.

Hosted ever so generously by Ted Tonks, Fabian, who was introduced as a school friend of Narcissa and Evan's, experienced some of the most sumptuous food and wine on the tour. He was delighted to find that the chef on board did not disregard his dietary requirements but used the opportunity to show off his skills even when working with a restricted ingredient list.

During the day, they hopped off the yacht to explore some new cultural centre, enchanted by the sights and sounds of places steeped in esoteric magic, building new connections to modern use in their personal study of magic. It was a better tour than any they could have had from mere textbooks.

It was as if Fabian had been granted access to a whole new world. There was a different manner and use of language that he had to quickly absorb or face humiliation, but as soon as he could pass as one of them he realised that doors that were once imposing and firmly shut to him now swung open with featherlight ease. There were places and shops that he would never have dared to enter that he now strode into with ease, by the side of Evan and Narcissa. With enough training, he learned to keep his amazement at the sheer excess and luxury of this lifestyle strictly to himself, marvelling silently when he was able to touch exquisite trinkets and souvenirs, like the crystal figures that were animated by light, or the notebooks bound by marbled vellum that swirled languidly on itself like volcanic lava. With the paltry pocket money he earned from summer jobs, he couldn't resist purchasing some small mementos as gifts for family and friends.

They eventually set foot into Greece, and Evan brought him and Narcissa to visit his maternal grandparents, whom he loved very fondly. They introduced themselves as Aristotle and Aphrodite Ambrosiadou, and spoiled them silly with food, wine and lavish gifts to make up for all the Christmases and birthdays they had missed. Their formidable reputations faded away in light of familial relations and they were just as warm and loving as any good grandparents were. They chatted like old friends, and the fact that they spoke to Fabian as if he were their social equal left him nearly tongue-tied from wonder at times. Inwardly, he felt like he was the only person conscious of the gulf in their place in society.

They spent days lazing around the olive groves, sipping cool spring water and gazing into the sparkling Aegean Sea. Evan declared that he never wanted to leave this place, and Fabian agreed, because Aristotle and Aphrodite were so genial he felt like he belonged in this home. He also had a sneaking feeling they were aware that he was intimately involved with Evan and seemed not to mind one single bit, even exchanging sly nods and winks and allowing them their privacy.

It was, therefore, with bewilderment that Fabian reacted on being asked to pack and leave the house on short notice.

"What's going on?" he mumbled sleepily, reluctant to stir from between the sheets.

"We have to go. Right away," Evan hissed anxiously. Fabian noticed that he had ordered the house elves to do their packing for them and all their belongings were ready to go. On a chair, a set of day clothes had been laid out for him. Evan ordered for him to put the clothes on, and they would sneak out through the service stairs.

"What's the hurry?" Fabian asked.

"Never you mind," Evan replied evasively. "Just do as I say."

It was later, when they were back on the Ulysses that Fabian found out from Narcissa that the reason for the swift exit was the arrival of Evan's estranged mother. With more pressing, Fabian found out that Evan still resented her for leaving him behind when she divorced his father. Apparently, she had chosen to leave with the house elf, and Evan could never forgive her for preferring a house elf to him.

Back on the yacht, yet another soirée was going on. A band was playing some waltzes on deck, and a flurry of expensive mead was called out for all. It was at this moment, graced by the presence of all her family and closest friends, that Edward Tonks decided to ask for Andromeda's hand in marriage, to which she willingly agreed. On bended knee Tonks produced a sparkling engagement ring and slipped it into her finger. Overwhelmed, she tried to help him stand up after, whereupon he grabbed her in a hug and they kissed passionately, and Fabian could see tears of joy streaming down Druella's face. She felt a surge of accomplishment as a mother, for she had just handed off Bellatrix to the Lestrange family, and her second was well on her way her way to a successful marriage. The third she did not have to worry about, for she had the most number of suitors and she had the luxury of choice.


	19. Chapter 18

The glorious summer soon passed and it was the start of yet another school year. Narcissa had thrown herself headlong into preparations for her sister's marriage, and she had requested for numerous bridal catalogues. These she studied closely, bookmarking pages for gowns, bouquets and floral arrangements that inspired her. She sent clippings of these to her sister, who was all too happy to let her do the choosing.

However, in the late autumn, rumours began to circulate that Edward Tonks was an impostor without anything to his name. The rumours were solidified when the notoriously reticent Salem Tonks came out to say that the familial branch Edward claimed to descend from had been wiped out years ago in a tragic Portkey accident in Bermuda.

Scandal swiftly broke. It was not enough that Edward Tonks was a fraud. He had absolutely nothing to his name nor was he born of noble blood. The honour of the Black family name had been dragged through the mud by this one Mudblood. There could be no forgiving of what fools he had made of them when he so boldly asked for her hand and they so willingly agreed. Oh the shame! Oh the horror! Oh fie! Here was a devious, scheming man who lusted after the unattainable prize of a daughter of the House of Black. Here was one who could not keep to his natural order in society but had to worm his way up, the stinking, slimy devil of a man. He had wanted to corrupt their pure daughter for his sinful desire and for this he should be punished without mercy.

Things took a turn for the worse when it transpired that Andromeda had not been the foremost victim of this cruel deception. In fact, she soon admitted that she had aided and abetted this fraud, for she truly loved Ted and wanted her family to understand him on equal terms, knowing they would never accept him otherwise. She cited all the times they had laughed appreciatively at the jokes Ted made, or how they admired his intellect or his cunning, the numerous times they called him one of their own, the deep discussions they had about the future of wizarding politics, and how they thought him bright and promising and would entrust him their second daughter in marriage.

This betrayal was too much for Cygnus or Druella to bear. All branches of the Black family soon came out in vehement defence of their victimhood and finally they offered Andromeda an ultimatum—she was to repent and come back into the fold, and she would atone for her sins by marrying a proper pureblood. Failure to do so meant permanent excommunication from the family. All that had defined her as a person up till now she stood to lose, if she so chose to sully herself with this impure breed of humanity.

Andromeda chose Ted.

Narcissa was immediately distraught and was unable to understand her sister's choice. Her perspective had been addled by family propaganda, which sought to assassinate Ted's character, and she also thought her sister weak, for being incapable of making the necessary choice. Narcissa had been brought up with a strong sense of duty to preserve and uphold the name of her family, and it was contrary to everything she had been trained to do. Worse still, she could not find comfort from her cousin nor his paramour.

It was at this point that friction ignited between Fabian and she. Fabian insisted that Andromeda had done nothing wrong and became angry with her for thinking of muggleborns as inferior or less than human. Fabian insisted that her family was at fault and that everything her family did was a misstep. Fabian began to throw around big words like "undermining the validity of the individual" and "unchecked privilege" and "entrenched bigotry" so much so that Narcissa became furious at him and screamed at him for being a cold, uncaring Ravenclaw only too happy to pontificate on other people's misfortune, oblivious to all the emotions at stake.

Fabian, in turn, was extremely infuriated by her accusations of over-intellectualism, declaring that it was the last resort of those with indefensible positions and huffed that if she had any sense in her she would open her eyes to the systematic discrimination faced by the likes of Edward Tonks.

Wailing, Narcissa called to Evan to defend her, but Evan was lost in troubles of his own. His father, in order to defend his sister's honour, had joined the fray of those heaping slander upon slander on Edward, whom Evan found most agreeable on the tour, and it became clearer than ever to him that his father would stand for nothing but the continued purity of the old houses. Evan was increasingly aware of the fact that he was heading ever farther down the path of disappointment to his father. The fact that he was unlikely to bring forth sons of his own started to weigh down on his heart. He knew for certain that his father, who had already found him a disgrace for struggling with his grades, would consider his preference for those of his own gender unnatural and an insult upon the family name. He began to see his future ahead of him—a forced marriage of convenience, followed by loveless reproduction. Was this why his mother had left his father? He wondered if his parents had been forced into marriage and when an heir was perfunctorily produced it was no longer necessary to keep up the pretence of being a couple. He had read of his mother's affairs in the newspaper without comprehending, and back then he believed the accusations of her moral deficiency, her recklessness, her shamelessness. He saw in his future the same vilification his mother received, unless he denied himself everything that was true about him and lived a lie.


	20. Chapter 19

The last straw came when Andromeda, despite all the hurt and humiliation she had caused the family, still decided to send them an invite to her wedding in a Muggle church. It was as if she was taunting them, flaunting her treachery for all to see, delighting in her dirty, shameful transgressions, parading her sins.

It was at that time that Narcissa wrote one final letter to her sister, begging her to see the light and turn from her mistake before it was too late—

"I'm sorry Mrs Malfoy," Ron Weasley interrupted at this point. "But do you realise what a sanctimonious piece of shit you are?"

Narcissa was immediately taken aback. She looked like she had been hit with lightning, but quickly composed herself.

"With all due respect," Hermione began, "I must agree with Ron, but in kinder words. I cannot stand for your blind loyalty to unquestioned values and it is my sincere hope that you will one day accept your sister's decision and be reconciled with her."

Harry nodded in agreement. He could not tell what Narcissa was truly feeling, for a socialite of her experience could effortlessly don any mask.

There was a sudden frostiness between them. No one dared to speak any further.

"I regret that I shall have to put an end to our interview," Narcissa concluded brusquely. She called for the house elves to show them their way out. Hermione's brows furrowed. She looked like she had more to say, but decided against speaking.

The house elf led them to the drawing room, where she began to prepare the fireplace. Hermione looked around, as if checking that Mrs Malfoy was not within earshot.

She leaned down and asked the house elf if she was in paid employment.

"Oh yes!" Tippy, the house elf, replied, nodding with a wide-eyed expression. "Mrs Malfoy pays us well. Mrs Malfoy doesn't want us running off to other households, you see. Tippy also gets one day off per week." Tippy smiled distantly to herself, as if thinking of what she would do on her next day off.

Ron looked at Hermione with a sly smile. Hermione grinned at him in turn, as Tippy handed them the Floo powder and they headed into the fireplace.

...

There was a knock, hesitant at first but then surer, like a quick rap. Andromeda Tonks opened the door. She had been waiting for the delivery of drawer dividers so that she could get Teddy's socks organised. She had spent the whole of yesterday organising her bookshelves by genre followed by alphabetical order and was hankering for more sorting to do.

Standing at her door, however, was Narcissa Malfoy.

"Andie," Narcissa began, calling her by the nickname she forbade Ted to use ever since she stopped being _their_ Andie.

Andromeda stared coldly at Narcissa. "What do you want?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry," Narcissa began. "I'm here to apologise."

"I don't want your apology," Andromeda replied. "I don't need your apology."

"I know," Narcissa breathed, seemingly holding back tears. "But I need your forgiveness."

"And what if I don't want ever want to forgive?"

"_Andie_," Narcissa begged. "I can help you." With a small gesture she indicated the humble furnishings of her home.

"Go away," Andromeda replied. "If you think you can come here and throw money at us to assuage your guilt you are certainly not welcome."

Narcissa's lower lip began to tremble. "It's not my guilt I want to assuage. You could do with help, Andromeda, and I could start by being a decent human being."

Andromeda looked at her younger sister and shook her head with a wry smile. "I'm not taking your money," she repeated. "You could do with being less presumptuous."

Cissy nodded meekly. "How can I make things right again?" she despaired, her voice barely above a whisper. "You know our family is dead. We're the only ones left. All we've ever done by insisting on our purity is to secure our own extinction."

Andromeda looked at her. For a long while there was a silence between them as they each decided what next to say. Andromeda looked like she was about to close the door on Narcissa, but against her better judgment she threw it open.

"We could start by having tea," Andromeda said. "_Sister_."

...

_What is really important about human beings is the fact that they are each a unique nexus of relations with others—therefore, no one could ever be considered exactly equivalent to anything or anyone else. It is only by the threat of violence that one can tear people out of those endlessly complicated webs of relationship with others that render them unique._

—David Graeber, _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_, Chapter Seven – Honour and Degradation


	21. Chapter 20

When the weather was good, and sometimes, even when the weather was bad, Hermione loved to get out from under the ground and take the short walk to Liverpool Street Station for lunch. There was nothing more she loved than being lost in a crowd so fully alive, and she also loved being in the midst of muggle activity—in a way, it kept her rooted, and in another way, it served to remind her that the two worlds she lived in shared the same spaces.

On this day, she brought along the Moroccan lamb salad with char-grilled vegetables and couscous Ron prepared for her, slyly heated up with a charm just before she left the halls of the Ministry. With her other hand she held a cup of coffee from her favourite coffee shop in the world, one owned by a rather famous muggle author.

Wedged somewhat unglamorously under her armpits was a stack of letters she intended to go through during lunch. She had reached out to several sources for some information that was incredibly difficult to put together, and inside those envelopes contained her surest leads.

With great satisfaction, she found an empty spot by a bench and thought of how perfect this moment was—delectable lamb couscous prepared lovingly by her cookery-obsessed husband, the best coffee this side of London, and, in the letters, answers to questions she had been looking for.

...

Hermione passed a sheet of paper to Dolohov. On it was a printout from a community newspaper from Canada, of an article about a couple who died in a traffic collision.

"I believe these are your parents?" Hermione prompted him.

Dolohov stared at the article, which was printed on white muggle office paper. Steve and Anna Dolman, a well-respected elderly couple active in the community, often working with refugees and homeless shelters, were killed almost instantly on impact when their car was hit by a drunk driver who had dashed past the red lights at an intersection.

Hermione handed him several other sheets of paper to support her claim. Some photos, their obituaries, brief biographies taken from the organisations they volunteered at.

Dolohov said nothing. He was obstinate in his refusal to cooperate with Ms Granger's investigation.

"That's not all," Hermione continued. "I found out about your sister too. She's still alive."

At this, Dolohov looked up with a small measure of shock. "How is she? What is she doing?"

Hermione surmised that he cared more for his sister than he did for his parents. She took out a small rectangle of thick card and slipped it across the table to Dolohov.

"She works in what the muggles call 'investment banking'," Hermione began. "This is her business card."

Ron Weasley suddenly spoke up: "The muggles say it's an evil job."

Hermione shushed Ron, explaining that she didn't want to get into the nuances of evil.

Dolohov had been studying the business card. The logo was a square of blue, and on it was written words such as "Katherine Cohen" and "Fixed Income". The office address was in New York.

"She's a squib," Hermione said plainly, all while her eyes were fixed on him to gauge his reaction. "She was adopted by muggles who brought her up as their own."

Dolohov's face remained unchanged. He said nothing.

"We'll make a deal," Hermione continued. "We will arrange for her to visit you in a neutral setting, closely supervised by trained aurors, without letting her know of your criminal record. In return, we want you to tell us everything you know about Fabian Prewett."

"Everything is a tall order," Dolohov replied.

"Your relationship with Fabian Prewett," Hermione clarified. "We want to know how and why you met, what you did together, and how it ultimately lead to his death, if it is in any way a consequence of the two of you being involved."

Dolohov could feel three pairs of eyes boring into him. There was a long silence, as if he were making it clear that the information they wanted from him would not be easy to obtain.

"I want to see my sister," he finally said.


	22. Chapter 21

In the summer before his final year in Hogwarts, Fabian had successfully applied for work placement at the Ministry, in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Through his job shadowing actual diplomats, he came into contact with Philomena Ambrosiadou, who was on the council of economic cooperation within Wizarding Europe.

He recognised her immediately through Evan's description of his mother, although she knew nothing of him, which was a relief. There was some recent turmoil in the magical economy, caused by the drastic change in the exchange rates of wizarding currency to muggle currency. The muggles had gone and decided to play with the value of their own currency, so it was said, and in doing so managed to accumulate a vast amount of gleaming golden galleons for themselves all while depressing the real wealth of the magical peoples.

The financial crisis had sparked a series of mass outrage at muggles and muggleborns, who were blamed for this havoc by their sheer insistence on imposing their muggle ways on the magical world.

The purported lack of integration on the part of the muggles and muggleborns soon led to the rise of the populist magical nationalism movement, which posited that the magical world should cleave itself from the muggle world and become a fully independent nation of its own.

Being in the department of international magical cooperation placed Fabian at a very good vantage point. He was able to observe that many senior officials inwardly supported the idea of the fully independent magical nation, but the paradox of the statute of secrecy meant that each world, the magical and the muggle, had to exist in the cracks of each other's spaces. To become independent was to admit its existence, and in doing so risk exposing the magical world, once more, to the threat of violence and persecution that had birthed the statute of secrecy in the first place.

Several emergency meetings were called to rein in the damage of the financial crisis. It was through those meetings that Fabian came to work closely with Philomena Ambrosiadou, taking care of the dreary but essential tasks such as taking down the minutes of her meetings, formatting her policy paper presentations, warming up her tea and buttering her scones.

He soon found inconsistencies between her actual person and Evan's description of her. She was articulate and commanding, and had a voice that people listened to. Though Fabian could not fully agree with her point of view, he found her receptive to his opposing views and the fact that she was willing to engage in conversation with him, a mere intern, rather impressed him some.

Towards the end of his internship, to thank him for his efforts, and also because she knew the allowance given to interns was much too paltry, Philomena left Fabian a gift. She asked him to open it after he left the office and went home, but Fabian sneakily unwrapped the gift in the privacy of the loo and found that it was a gold watch that looked incredibly, unbelievably expensive. It was not something he would ever be able to wear. He was not even sure he should accept such a gift, for a gift of this value was sure to have strings attached.

Just before the end of his final workday at the department, Fabian approached Philomena and told her in the politest way he could that he was unable to accept her gift of a gold watch.

"I understand your concerns about its value and suitability for someone of your standing as you have no established position," Philomena replied, "but in turn I ask you, how much is an item, any item for that matter, truly worth?"

Fabian was puzzled. _Was this a trick question?_ "An item is worth whatever value we ascribe to it," he said.

"Very well, then let it be known that this watch is worthless."

"How could it be?" Fabian exclaimed.

"This watch was meant as a gift for my son on his seventeenth birthday, as is our tradition. However, he has rejected my gift as it meant nothing to him. Hence this watch is worthless to me too, as a reminder of my son's rejection. It is my hope that you will take this and find it of more value to you."

Fabian tried not to look too shocked at her reply. Evan's mother had meant to give this incredibly beautiful watch for his seventeenth birthday but he refused it. For Fabian to refuse this gift was then to reject Philomena once more. Fabian could not bring himself to do it, and besides, she meant what she said in all honesty and it made a kind of sense. She could not have known of his special relationship with Evan, but by fate he was in a position to make amends.

Fabian decided that he would accept his gift without qualms, and that it was his purpose to pass this on to the original intended recipient.


	23. Chapter 22

Evan would hear nothing of it. It was only the first day of seventh year but nothing had gone without a fight between them. When they had a moment to themselves, Fabian said he had something important to pass on to Evan, and he presented the watch in all its shining golden glory, resting atop a cushion of velvet in its luxurious box.

Fabian tried to explain that Philomena terribly, genuinely wanted to be reconciled with him again, and that it was her hope that with this gift, this coming-of-age, Evan would step into full maturity and he could repair his broken relationship with his mother like two grownups would.

Evan went into a sputtering, insufferable tantrum. He accused Fabian of betrayal, having sold himself into a bit-part role in his mother's sinister machinations. He was now her sock puppet, he had been brainwashed, she had cast the Imperius Curse on him.

Fabian was not about to accept Evan's blatant slander and retorted that he had done nothing but massacre his mother's character when she was in fact perfectly gracious and dignified, and began to accuse Evan of a wilful immaturity, and pointed out that he was the only one behaving like a spoilt brat.

Their spat got increasingly heated, and annoyed by the mere sight of the watch, which Fabian was incessantly pushing into his face, Evan shot a spell into Fabian, who instinctively defended himself by holding up the watch. The watch was blasted out of his hand, and its trajectory took it out of the nearby window in an explosive motion.

Fabian gaped at the open window, then at his empty hands. He looked at Evan with an expression of utmost accusation. He ran to the window to check that the falling watch had not resulted in any casualty, and took out his wand to summon the watch back, but before he could utter the incantation, Evan made it clear that he would never speak to him again if Fabian even so much as tried to retrieve the watch. Fabian told him that he was being childish, and with an _accio, _called the watch back. Evan flew into a rage, absolutely livid that Fabian would defy his wishes, and stormed out of the room.


	24. Chapter 23

Neither made any mention of the watch after that. After a while, they were back on speaking terms, but they were not as affectionate as before. Fabian found his attempts to apologise for being rude on that day brushed off rudely in turn, and he could not even so much as think of running his hand through Evan's hair again, or to caress that perfect jawline. They were back on civil terms, but the romantic aspect seemed to have flown out of that same window that night and remained irretrievable. Christmas came along and all the school were dismissed for the holidays. Surprisingly, Fabian received an invite from Narcissa, who was not aware of the sudden chill in the relationship, to a Christmas ball for the benefit of yet another charitable cause.

Fabian was about to decline the invite when Evan replied that of course the both of them would attend the ball, after all that effort Narcissa put into organising it alongside her mother.

At the ball, Fabian was assiduously ignored by Evan, so he stuck to himself by the banquet table, when a ginger-haired man approached him, tall and gangly like himself.

"Are you lost, my dear? You don't look you don't belong here." The man regarded Fabian's ill-fitting rental dress robes with distaste.

Fabian was appalled by his rudeness, although he was not incorrect. Throughout the entire night, Fabian had become increasingly aware that there was a world that was not his own, a world to which Evan belonged and he did not, and that all these balls, these glamorous charity galas with witches and wizards bedecked in flamboyant, exquisite bespoke dress robes and dazzling family jewels were entirely inaccessible to him, that this was a world in which he meant nothing and counted for nothing. He started to long for the world he recognised, the one with his sister and brother and living in a tiny cottage wedged in between a farm and the forest in the Welsh valleys, where everyone was honest and warm and not plagued by some confounded need to uphold outdated traditions.

"I'm Ignatius Prewett," the ginger man said pompously. "And _whom_ might you be?"

Fabian looked at the man. Were they actually...related? He was vaguely aware his father had some brothers who ran off with their various pursuits and none of them bothered to keep in touch.

"I'm Fabian Prewett," he replied.

Ignatius Prewett responded with a look of such exaggerated shock mixed with unmistakable snobbery. "How on earth have you _infiltrated_ this place?" he asked in a melodramatic voice.

"I did not infiltrate, I was _invited_," Fabian said indignantly.

"How were you invited? Pray tell, my imagination does not stretch so far."

Fabian was getting annoyed at Ignatius. "Are we related? Because you're being horrid to me."

Ignatius contorted his face with disgust on entertaining the idea that they were related. He looked like he was about to stomp off in a huff, when some other socialite he recognised came up to them and greeted them warmly. Fabian noted with interest the closeness with which they kissed each other on the cheeks. It seemed to him that there was something more going on here, in a way that people with particular inclinations recognised immediately in others who were like them.

Ignatius then swiftly created an excuse that his wife, Lucretia Black, was calling for him and stomped off impetuously.

Fabian was now left with the chore of socialising with someone he knew nothing about. "Are you friends with Ignatius?" he ventured.

The nameless socialite, who was dressed flamboyantly in robes of elaborate gold brocade, responded eagerly. "Yes, Iggy is a dear friend," he stated, as if it was a matter of course.

"Oh," Fabian responded unenthusiastically, failing to come up with empty social niceties. "What do you know of his marriage to Lucretia Black?"

The other wizard looked mildly surprised that he was so ill informed. "Don't you know what happened with Lucie's former husband?" He shuddered. "What a beastly man. Oh poor Lucie, she suffered so heavily under his hand. Now, Iggy, he's a dear one and he is very fond of Lucie, so he took it upon himself to preserve her honour by snatching her the jaws of that ghastly man."

"Oh," Fabian replied, unsure of what else to say. Perhaps his assumptions about his uncle's proclivities were wrong.

The wizard must have sensed his confusion, for he so kindly elaborated on the situation. "Lucretia was Iggy's earliest supporter, back when he was a pauper of a playwright. She was the one who lent him the money to stage his first play. He'll never forget her support and she's still his favourite muse."

Fabian nodded mutely. The wizard took pity on his sheer cluelessness, and winking at him, began to say, "I assume we are all _friends of unicorns_ here."

Fabian was seized by a sudden bout of nerves. He looked around searchingly, pretending not to know what the euphemism meant, the same one that all his schoolmates used to mock him with when, at a Care of Magical Creatures lesson in his third year, a unicorn responded best to him out of the whole class.

"It's good that they have what they have now, Lucie and Iggy. He cares for her and she gets to preserve her inheritance. But it must be said no one is under the illusion that this branch will bear fruit."

Fabian nodded again. The wizard looked unimpressed with his lack of enthusiasm. A whirlwind of people flurried around him in air kisses and feigned smiles, and Fabian found himself face to face with his uncle once again.

"Ignatius," he called out. "I heard about what happened with Lucretia."

Ignatius looked at him like he was a speck of dust on a flawless porcelain vase. "That's none of your business," he dismissed.

Fabian looked at him sadly. He had so many things to ask his uncle about. How was it like to climb into the upper echelons of society? How does one manage to have affairs without losing respectability? How did he succeed in mingling with these people, how did he get them to accept him?

Ignatius seemed to have read his mind. "Don't be so common, my dear. I know you're dazzled by all the finery on display but take these words to heart—you will not find the prince or princess you are looking for within these gilded walls. A dark heart lies beneath and it does you well to run from it, as fast and far as you can. But if you choose to stay, realise that the only true nobility is in your own deeds. You will have no allies; you will have no royal one to sweep you off your feet into the sunset on a white horse. You'd sooner find yourself the keeper of secrets and the sweeper of things under the rug."

"But what about the one I love?" Fabian blurted. "What will I do with—with him?" His voice trailed off into a whisper at the last pronoun.

Ignatius pulled a face. "Sweetheart, love is the biggest lie that was _ever_ invented."


	25. Chapter 24

After Christmas, Evan refused to speak to him anymore, not even acknowledging his presence when they saw each other in the halls. Fabian was confused and his heart turned fragile. He longed so badly to ask Evan if it was truly over between them, but he could not even get close enough to get an answer. He was heartbroken that Evan left him dangling with uncertainty. He wanted to be given a chance to reason things out, to point out to Evan that there was a sensible way to resolve their problems. All this over a stupid watch, Fabian thought, a stupid watch dented from the spell Evan had cast in anger. He just wanted to talk, to breach that maddening gulf of silence between them that stretched ever deeper. He wanted proper closure but it was not granted to him.

At the same time, there were NEWTs to study for that Fabian didn't have the heart to, still nursing the loss of his study partner. He began to wish he had someone he could tell all this to, without fear of being judged or having to explain everything from the beginning. He knew his siblings were out of the question, and when he thought of them he burned with jealousy at the ease with which they found someone they loved that they were still in love with. He knew that he was always the least loveable of the bunch, he was not as attractive and he could go overboard when there was something he felt strongly about. He became increasingly convinced that no one would ever love him as he was, that the only way for it was to transform himself for the person. He resolved to try harder next time, he resolved that if Evan ever spoke to him again he would go on his knees and beg for forgiveness and promise to be the kind of person he wanted him to be, not the kind who would try to interfere where he was not wanted. He wanted and wanted what was lost to him and what he could not have, plagued by insecurity and inferiority.

He spent his final weeks in school crying to himself alone, over his textbooks, feeling like he didn't want to study yet driven by the fear that he was otherwise completely worthless if he failed to live up to his reputation as the kind of student who always did well in exams.

The NEWTs passed in a blur and on the last day of school, he found his brother staring at the noticeboard plastered with sign-up sheets for various job interviews targeted at school-leavers.

"I think I'm signing up for law enforcement," Gideon told him.

For the first time in a long while, Fabian felt like he was pulled from himself as he reacted with shock. His brother had a contract as a professional with the Cannons all lined up. Why the sudden change of heart?

"You heard the news," Gideon said.

Fabian nodded weakly. He had not caught up with the news in a long while and had no idea what Gideon was talking about.

"It's not right, you know? It's not right that all this is happening and I'm not there to stop it."

"What do you want to stop, Gideon?"

"The violence. The extremism," Gideon replied, as if Fabian knew exactly what he was referring to.

All of a sudden, Fabian was overcome with a sense of shame. He had been wallowing for so long he had missed all that was important in the world out there and here was his twin brother doing the heroic thing by sacrificing his lifelong dream to protect others.

"Maybe I should sign up too, eh?" He looked at his brother, who smiled back at him.

Fabian took the quill attached to the noticeboard and put his name on the sheet. He had no clear idea why he was doing this, because the job scope sounded completely wrong for him. But what he thought in that moment was if that his brother could sacrifice his dreams and risk his life to save other people, then there might come a day where someone would have to do the same for him.


	26. Chapter 25

There were not many around to attend, the chapel was barely half-full. In front of the altar lay two coffins, identical, and within the coffins lay two men, identical. One stepped up to deliver a short eulogy, the only one left of the three of them. Her husband and her children sat in the front pews, a reminder that there was life beyond this death. The children were far too young to understand the horror behind this loss and their innocence was a comfort to her.

And yet, she knew with certainty that the irrevocable, irreversible fact that her brothers were dead would never cease to haunt her for as long as she lived. Of her own family she was the lone person who had not succumbed to death. The guilt of survivorship had placed on her an even greater resolve to see to it that the rest of her family, the one she had created for herself with Arthur, would live to old age in ripe and fulfilling lives.

"The thing I remember most fondly of my brothers was the way they could make any person laugh. It was not a laughter borne from cruelty, at the expense of cheap jokes or ill-hatched pranks. It was a laughter that came from kindness, from an unfailing ability to brighten anyone's day. They had hearts overflowing with generosity and they were always willing to show love even to those whose intent was to hurt them. We mourn, not because life was snatched away from them at so young an age, but for the fact that the rest of us are now denied the opportunity to be made whole from their goodness. I know that some of those who so brutally murdered them are still out there, and it is to them that I say that though my brothers are dead, death shall have no dominion over them, for angels such as these never truly leave our side."


	27. Chapter 26

The summer was long and muggle London was bursting with tourists from all over the world. There was an inexplicable sense of hope in the air as this was a time when muggles believed in the best of their ability through the acts of their sportswomen and sportsmen in the Summer Olympics.

London was at her magical best, teeming with colour and noise and people and heat. They were right in the heart of this city, the bustling, impossibly touristy heart, in Leicester Square. Of all things, Dolohov had begged for a hamburger, which he was scarfing down with great speed, while simultaneously cramming greasy chips into his mouth. All of which he washed down with monstrous amounts of Coca-Cola, the cup of which was proudly declaring its Olympic credentials. Ron Weasley felt nauseated by this sight.

"Do you know what goes into that hamburger?" he asked sceptically. "This is not food, my friend, this is poison. When you eat food such as this you are torturing yourself, beating your body into a slow, painful death as you shut down its functions by sheer overdose of artificial chemicals that the body cannot process..."

"Can't be worse than the food in Azkaban," Dolohov retorted, with his mouth still full.

Ron made a face. "Surely gruel is better than this. There are oats and rice and that's a good lot more nutrition."

Dolohov scoffed derisively. "Gruel? What are we in, Victorian times?" He gestured at the hordes of tourists in polo shirts and shorts, shod in modern sneakers, draped in accoutrements such as their national flag and the occasional Union Jack purchased from a souvenir stand.

"What do you eat then?" Ron asked, slightly alarmed it was not the gruel he assumed it to be.

"Leftovers? Expired food. To keep the costs of running the prison low, they take in all the stuff that the shops are about to throw away."

"You can't be serious?"

"Sometimes, the vegetables are half-rotten when they get to us," Dolohov said, relishing the horror on Ron's face. "I know, I work in the kitchen."

"You?!" Harry exclaimed. "They put you in the kitchen...with all those knives around?"

Dolohov shrugged. He seemed to enjoy the shock on their faces. "You can ask prison management."

Hermione shook her head in dismay. Azkaban had been privately run after the Ministry sold off some functions in a recent privatisation spree. Some functions, she believed, should never be run for profit. Prisons were one such example. She made a mental note to look into this.

Dolohov finished the last of his hamburger, licking the greasy paper with glee.

"Alright," Harry said, looking at his watch, which used to belong to Fabian Prewett. "It's almost time. Let's head over to Pizza Express. Are you sure you'll be able to eat some more?"

Dolohov nodded enthusiastically, smiling. He looked so happy around food, Hermione noted. It was as if he were a completely different to the one in Azkaban, sullen and silent and extremely difficult. The burly, tattooed, menacing Death Eater persona had seemed to fade away the moment they left the prison.

The group headed off to Pizza Express, where they had arranged for a special meeting with Dolohov's sister, who was in town for a business trip and who also had corporate-sponsored tickets to the Olympics. Dolohov had several tracking spells on him in case he decided to make a break for it, and he also had some spells that invisibly handcuffed him to Hermione. Harry and Ron had been tasked with muggle protection, as Aurors, ensuring that nothing would go wrong.

They were early, and they took their seats at the table. Hermione took out her muggle mobile, procured for this occasion, to check with Katherine Cohen if she was on her way. She asked them to order first, which they did, and she turned up just as the first pizza arrived.

She was dressed smartly in a muggle business suit, tailored to fit perfectly in high-quality fabric. Her handbag was structured and professional, and her blond hair was neatly pulled into a bun. She was supposedly five years younger than Dolohov, which put her in her early fifties, but she looked a great deal younger, especially when contrasted to her Azkaban-aged brother.

There was disbelief on her face. "Antonin?" she asked, her voice ringing with an American accent. "_Antonin_."

"Katya," he replied.

"Oh gosh," she replied, clapping a hand to her mouth. "I thought you were dead! I thought you died that day..."

"I thought you died too," Dolohov replied.

"What's happened to you? We have so much to catch up on." Katherine looked around the table at Hermione, Harry and Ron. "Are these...your children?"

Harry shifted around in his seat.

"No, Katya," Dolohov said. "Not my children. They're my guards for today. Prison guards, I'm a prisoner, so sorry you have to see me like this."

Katya looked up from her pizza, shocked. "What have you done? Oh Tosha...what happened to you?"

"I murdered someone," Dolohov said plainly. "Or people, many people."

"Why would you do that? How could you...? Why?"

"There is no why," Dolohov dismissed. "But I thought you should know. Maybe it's good we are not family anymore."

Katherine shook her head. "No," she said firmly. "We're still family. You have to tell me everything. I want to know all that's happened to you."

"You don't want to know, Katya, trust me. Let's talk about you. You look very well."

"I am well, but maybe very stressed out from my job. But never mind that, I want to talk about you."

"No," Dolohov said, shaking his head.

Katherine reached across the table, holding his hand in hers. "You saved me that day," she began. "Without you I would be long dead."

Hermione's curiosity was piqued, as, she was sure, Ron and Harry's. There was, naturally, the question of how the Dolohov family had come to be scattered all over the world, but the idea that there was some act of heroism from the one who ended up a criminal begged for more investigation.

"I don't want to talk about that. It's all in the past anyway."

Katherine was shaking her head, possibly holding in tears. "I cannot believe you would end up a murderer. Do...mum and dad know? Did you ever find out what happened to them?"

"They're dead, Katya. They moved to Canada a long time ago, perhaps they had given up on finding us. I am fairly sure they must have heard of what I've done too, if they were at all in touch with the news. You couldn't avoid the story. But they must have been ashamed as they have never contacted me all the years I was in prison."

"I didn't hear anything in the news about you."

"That's because you're a squib, Katya, and you've been brought up by muggles."

"What's that?"

Antonin uttered the Russian words for squib and muggles.

"Oh," Katya said. "I thought...I thought all that was a joke! Papa and mama, I mean, my adoptive parents, they said all that stuff about magic was all my imagination and probably my way of coping with the loss of my family. So magic is real after all?"

"It's not very magical," Dolohov said plainly.

"What did you do? What was it that landed you in prison?" Katya asked.

"I killed someone," Dolohov replied. "Someone I was...someone I was in a relationship with at that point in time."

Katya shook her head, dismayed by the implications of this violence. Having grown up in the United States in a progressive household, and as a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated field, she held not a few strong opinions that were feminist in nature and she had read all too much about the connection between murder rates and domestic violence. "Why did you kill her?"

"Him. I killed him," Dolohov replied.

"Why did you kill him?" Katya corrected.

"He just...he didn't fit into the rest of my life," Dolohov said.

"You don't kill anyone for a reason like that!" Katya exclaimed.

"He wouldn't go away," Dolohov said. "I couldn't think of any other way to get rid of him."

Katya had a look of utter disappointment that the brother she had thought so fondly of should turn out to be a criminal.

"I'm sorry, the reality is that you have a murderer for a brother. It may be bad for your business image so I will not mind if we never speak again."

"No, I do want to speak to you again. But right now, I think I need time to process all this." Katya looked at Hermione, indicating that she would like to wrap up and leave. Hermione nodded, and there was some tussle over the restaurant bill, for Katya insisted on paying.

All that done, Ron turned to Dolohov and said, "So you _were_ in a relationship with Uncle Fabian after all! I'm not going to let you get out of explaining this one."


	28. Chapter 27

Dear diary,

Sveta is well. Hermione Granger has agreed to pass me some kitten formula so I can feed her.

The dreams have started again. After the Dementors were gone l stopped having any dreams at all, but they're coming back. It's always the same—I see a body lying there, covered in filth and blood. I know that it was the work of my hands. Sometimes, the screams are still echoing through the room. The person is sobbing, and inside of me there is nothing but pure disgust. I hate the person; I hate that person's filthiness. I look down and I see that my hands are dirty, or that my robes are stained. I get angry. Why can't they ever keep their filth to themselves? I try to remove the blood from my hands, the stain from my robes, but the more I wash the dirtier it becomes. Anger bubbles and boils within me, it's all their fault, always their fault for making me so unclean. The anger gets to a point where it starts spilling over and I reach for my wand. As I am about to utter an incantation, the body turns over and I see that it is his face. I cannot see anything else after that, not the room or the blood or the body on the floor, which is always naked but not always matching his face. He is always crying, and he opens his mouth to say something, but I cannot hear it. I can never hear what he's saying, and sometimes he does this for hours and hours, just talking while I feel so angry but I cannot hear him and I cannot say anything. Sometimes it just ends there, and sometimes I simply wake up, and the moment I wake I feel so hollow inside.

Diary, I am going to tear this page out after I am done writing on it, because the psychologist reads my diary and I cannot stand the idea of her or her busybody friends interfering with their newfangled muggle psychoanalysis tripe. They're not all that bad, that Ron fellow is trying to improve the food in the kitchen which I don't half mind, but they can be so irritating when they think they change me.


	29. Chapter 28

Ron Weasley was a man on a mission—a mission to change the quality of prisoner nutrition at Azkaban Prison. If you knew him well enough, for example, if you were Hermione Granger and you were around when he was at home watching muggle television after work, then you would know exactly where he drew inspiration.

He began by asking Dolohov to show him around the kitchen and to introduce him to the process of food preparation. Contrary to his demeanour, the prison management said that he was one of the best-behaved inmates and had the respect of his fellow prisoners, which was why they appointed him as the leader of the kitchen team. The team was tasked with looking after the kitchen, cleaning it and maintaining some standard of hygiene, and to prepare the daily meals according to recipe at the prison. Not that there was much of a recipe to follow, for once a week they received an owl from the 'welfare director' with a list of food items they could expect to receive, and the daily catering menu was formulaic, comprising of a carbohydrate item, a meat item, and "fruit or vegetables". The "fruit or vegetables" component was open to very broad interpretation, as it could sometimes consist of bottles of fruit-flavoured syrup that were past the expiry date and had to be removed from shelves.

Ron Weasley noted that, given the conditions, the level of hygiene in the kitchen was very high. Dolohov claimed to be obsessed with cleanliness, and he ruled the kitchen with an iron fist, threatening the younger inmates with a brandish of the knife if they failed to wash their hands before handling food. He also seemed fond of throwing random insults at these younger inmates ever so often, and inmates whose concentration wandered from the task at hand often found themselves at the receiving end of some frozen food or the other. Today, it was expired cocktail sausage buns.

Dolohov led him to the oven, where he picked up yet another box of frozen food. Reading off the box, he proudly announced: "Frozen Welsh faggots!"

A scowl soon befell Ron's face. He was sure Dolohov was taking the mickey out of him with that unfortunately named product.

"Frozen Welsh faggots," Dolohov said again, clearly enjoying the moment. "Made with the heart and liver and many disgusting fatty parts...of a pig."

It took all the self-control Ron had not to punch him in the face right then.

"I take it it's your favourite?" he asked Dolohov through gritted teeth.

Dolohov raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise. "I can't imagine why you would think so."

Ron snatched the box of frozen Welsh faggots from Dolohov's hands. "This isn't proper food," he huffed.

"I know," Dolohov replied with a huge shrug. "Since coming to Azkaban I have put on so much weight. It is quite obvious what this diet has done to us." He nodded to indicate the teeming mass of prisoners on the other side of the kitchen counter gobbling up piles of so-called food.

"You've seen our pictures from when we were first arrested," Dolohov said in what sounded to Ron like a flirtatious tone. "You know I used to be quite svelte and I do not mean to brag but I was much better-looking than I am now. Then I was slim with lean muscles but now I am all big and burly like a barrel."

Ron looked at Dolohov, exasperated. Yes, he had seen enough photos, the bloody damn photos about which he could not even squeeze a word out of him. The bloody photos that nearly glowed with the radiance of two young men basking in the sun and delighting in their earthly bodies.

"Fuck you," Ron uttered to Dolohov under his breath, as Dolohov emptied several boxes of the faggots into a large pot on the stove. He could barely be heard above the din of the sizzling oil, and the air was soon rancid with processed fat.


	30. Chapter 29

"We are here today to hear your side of the story," Hermione began, her face full of expectation. "We have fulfilled our side of the deal and you have seen your sister, who is alive and well.

As soon as you are ready, please describe in detail the conditions of your first meeting."

Dolohov's arms were folded tightly across his chest, but to everyone's surprise, he actually replied.

"You know the St Mungo's bombing?"

"Yes," Hermione replied. "The one where they received a message that all the wings were ready to blow up if the ministry did not release exactly which ward Dumbledore was kept in for treatment."

"The Daily Prophet published an article about civilian heroes, do you remember?"

"Yes, the infamous Fantastic Four piece. The article claimed that these four civilians just happened to be at the right place at the right time and due to their heroic efforts saved hundreds of patients and visitors from dying that day.

It was a ruse. By sheer dumb luck some Prophet journalist had accidentally identified key personnel of the secret Auror program. People forgot about that article until their incapacitation forced the ministry to admit the existence of its Auror division." At this, Hermione turned to acknowledge Harry and Ron.

"They didn't save the hospital by sheer happenstance," Dolohov confirmed. "They knew it was going to happen well beforehand and they were there to stop us. And we weren't stupid, either. We knew something more was going on."

Looking them straight in the eye, Dolohov began to rattle off the names and purported identities of the "fantastic four" civilians.

"Alice Giggs, archivist at the British Magical Library, here to pick up medicines for her mother.

Frank Longbottom, physiotherapist with the Chudley Cannons, here to see his Uncle Algie who had been hospitalised after an accident with a Nogtail.

Gideon Prewett, run-of-the-mill hitwizard, here with his brother, Fabian Prewett, low-level administrative worker at the Ministry, to take their pregnant sister home for dinner after a routine checkup.

Of course, we didn't believe all that bullshit."

...

It was Boxing Day and would you believe it, he had just come from the office? Fabian Prewett had just been in to file his report on the St Mungo's incident, where their cover had so nearly been blown. It was going to make their life a hell lot tougher and Crouch wouldn't be pleased with them.

There was no one around at all, and after sealing his sheets of papyrus he dropped the file into the document tray marked for Amelia Bones. As he was more of the "tech guy", to borrow muggle parlance, the rest of them had spun out their reports in a couple of hours and were able to enjoy their holidays, while he had to spend most of Christmas in the Department of Mysteries labs running various tests on material he had picked up at the scene.

His work finally done, he decided to treat himself. He really dug the muggle activity of film watching, and he knew there was a good one being released today. The whole of the United States went gaga over when it was released there back in May. For this occasion, he had bribed the box-office girl to save a ticket for him, which he was on his way to pick up.

He reached the Odeon with an ample buffer of time, and brazenly strode past the long queue to greet Ramona, the lovely young lady with spiky green hair and a safety pin stuck in her nose who worked at the ticket booth. He pretended to ask her about show times and she made a show of telling him off for being rude and chucked a flyer in his face. Fabian acted like he was embarrassed and very sorry, and beat a hasty retreat, clutching the flyer.

A safe distance away from the box office, lest he anger fans of the more aggressive persuasion, he unfolded the flyer to retrieve the ticket embedded in the crease. With an uncontrolled squeal of delight, he tucked the ticket into his coat pocket, patting it every minute or so to ensure it was still safely ensconced.

He took a quick glance at his watch. There was still a quarter of an hour to go. Time for a fag, he thought, reaching into his other pocket for his pack of smokes. Benson and Hedges, the packet read, glinting gold in the artificial light of muggles.

He reached into yet another pocket for his lighter. He fished around, but felt nothing. He felt a wadded up handkerchief and the disintegrated remains of other ticket stubs that he previously failed to remove before his trousers went to the wash. The lighter was nowhere to be found. He frowned to himself, trying to recall where he could have left it.

_Oh_. It suddenly dawned on him that he had exploded his lighter at St Mungo's to chase away the Inferi. Hospitals, dead people aplenty, bodies ripe for possession by Death Eaters—there were too many of them swarming down the atrium, and in what he thought was a very smooth move, almost like Mr Bond himself, he removed his lighter, threw it in the direction of the oncoming swarm, and, while it was still in midair, he pointed his wand at it in a incendiary motion, setting it alight and turning it into an explosive fireball.

That was all very good, but he was presently in need of a lighter. He looked around the square. People were milling about in pre-movie excitement. At the far corner was a smoker, a middle-aged man with a potbelly. Nearer to him, by a bench, was a tall young man hunched over a cigarette. Fabian fixated on the tall young man. He had tangled locks of shoulder-length chestnut brown hair that fell across his long, pale face. He was skinny, and seemingly wrapped in endless layers of jumpers and jackets. His face was angular—gosh those cheekbones could cut!—and he had a strong, striking gaze. He felt himself go slightly weak in the knees. Dare he approach this handsome, rakish stranger?

"Erm, ah, I am terribly sorry, but I couldn't help but notice that you have a cigarette lighter," Fabian babbled, his hands twisting around nervously. "If you would be so kind as to lend it to me for an instant, ah, thank you, I am eternally in your debt."

He could scarcely bring himself to look the stranger in the eye, but he was keenly aware that this stranger was staring very intently back at him. Fabian was uncomfortable with awkward silences. He could only deal in awkward babbling.

"Are you here to watch the film? I have heard it is excellent. It was very popular in the States. Space opera, they call it, this stuff is not precisely science fiction as it contains little speculation on technological advancements and its social and environmental implications. In fact, the epigraph of the film, the opening crawl, so I heard, indicates that this may possibly be historical allegory."

There was nary a change of expression on that stranger's face. Fabian was starting to feel that this venture was doomed to fail, and he should do the wise thing and extricate himself from further social embarrassment.

"Yes, I am here to watch the film," the stranger replied in a slow, languid voice, cigarette dancing between his lips. Hell, that was sexy, Fabian thought to himself, feeling like he could wither and die on the spot.

"Great!" Fabian replied, though it was largely a lie because he was not feeling great at all deep inside. "Are you...alone? Perchance?" He almost mentioned that he was alone too, but strangled those words at the throat before he sounded like a desperate loser. God, how does one impress a sexy stranger? Or do sexy strangers not desire attention at all, being so fatigued by it.

Fabian took a deep breath off his cigarette like it was an asthma inhaler. A sly smile crept across the stranger's lips. "Yes, I am alone," he said, and Fabian nearly fainted from relief.

The two of them stood there, puffing away at their cigarettes in silence, while Fabian tried all he could to stop himself from blurting out stupid things like "gosh you are the most attractive man I have ever met" and "oh sexy stranger I want you so bad" and "please please please let me have you if only for tonight".

The ushers began to let people in, and Fabian nervously indicated that he was intent on getting a good seat and rushed to the doors. He had hoped for it against all reason and he was now painfully aware that this stranger was following him into the cinema. God, he thought to himself, for in these desperate times he availed himself to higher powers. _Lord, help me._ I have absolutely no idea how I am going to spend the next two hours or so stuck to a cinema chair with the most beautiful man on earth right next to me. I might die, but I would allow myself to die only if heaven was full of bodies such as his.

Fabian nervously purchased a small packet of nuts, for good luck or to steel himself or whatever. He had lost all his senses and he failed to pick up on the fact that he had just paid one pound and received no change.

The movie was very exciting, sure, but not as exciting as the stranger next to him.

Oh, this man would be the death of him, he thought, as their faces were illuminated by the screen, on which this evil contraption called the Death Star was exploding in spectacular fashion. Merlin, that was _exactly_ what he felt like inside.


	31. Chapter 30

After the movie, he seized the opportunity to ask the stranger out for a drink.

"I'm Fabian," he simpered, and he was even bashfully swivelling a foot on the ground. "What's your name?"

"Tony," the stranger grunted.

"Ah, Tony," Fabian said, feeling like the mere mention of his name on his lips was enough to sweep him heavenward in bliss.

"We could go to a pub and have a pint if you like," Fabian said, trying to sound all heterosexual and manly, only to realise that the only pubs he knew in the area were all...well...they were all for a _bent_ clientele.

"Pint is good," the stranger replied gruffly, pulling out yet another cigarette to chain-smoke.

"Wow, that's..." Fabian began weakly. "How many do you do a day? I've been trying to cut down for the longest time, it's not good and my brother and sister don't like me to do it much."

"We all have vices," the stranger said gravely, and Fabian felt so insipid he could speak no more.

They went to a pub off the road that was decidedly not in the queer area, because oh god, Fabian would die if this mysterious stranger reacted in horror or worse, decided to beat him up on realising he was a giant fluffy poofter, as poofy as they come.

They settled down for a pint each, and a second, and soon the draught was flowing freely from the keg into their glasses and down their gullets, as they simultaneously ran through pack after pack of cigarettes all while Fabian babbled endlessly about the movie.

Tony offered brief quips to fill in the gaps at times, one of them being "I love Princess Leia", to which Fabian's intestines folded into such a quick knot he nearly fell off the chair. He steadied himself and then thought about how he was being such a fool. What had he hoped to achieve here? At most he could hope to bask in the radiant beauty of this stranger for a couple of hours or so and then go home and never see him again for the rest of his life. It was foolish for him to expect there should be anything more, not when Tony had shown absolutely zero interest in him. And the dark truth of it all was that Fabian was actually seeing someone at the moment, Bob from the magical creatures department.

But the only magical creature in this night was perched in front of him. Tony, perfectly formed Tony, otherwise nameless Tony, Tony who smoked a lot of cigarettes, Marlboro reds.

They were, in fact, getting increasingly inebriated to the point of intoxication. At some point, Tony said he had to leave, but upon seeing Fabian's drunken pleading face, asked if he wanted to stay the night. Fabian could hardly believe his ears and ascribed it to the alcohol and nicotine. Beautiful Tony, angelic Tony was asking him to go home with him?

Like an eager puppy dog he followed Tony home, down the stairs and into the Underground. Tony very kindly bought tickets for him, which was a relief, as this was, in actual fact, Fabian's first time on the Tube. Fabian regarded the whole construction with wide-eyed wonder, and in his inebriation he was vaguely aware that he kept repeating "the tube, the tuuube" in a reverent voice. They wound through the station onto the train and they got off the train and onto another train. Standing in the middle of the car, swaying side to side, smiling at him through the handlebars as the train wobbled its way through the city, they finally arrived at Tony's stop, Liverpool Street Station.

"This looks oddly familiar," Fabian drawled unthinkingly.

"Shut up," Tony hissed at him. Fabian had been dimly aware of all the other passengers making the effort to avoid his swaying babbling mass back in the train car. He hoped he had not seemed too much of nuisance.

"Ohh," Fabian slurred after a while. "I know this place! I work here!"

Tony grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and gave him a hard jolt. "Shut up," he said again.

Tony practically dragged him home as Fabian insisted on cheerfully waving to every person on the street. The streets were getting narrower and darker, and the place was looking increasingly dangerous. In the corners lurked members of skinhead gangs, and hurrying home at great speed, hunched over and fearful, were the street's Asian residents coming home late from work.

Tony dragged him to a small building with fabric wholesalers on the ground floor, and asked him not to make a sound. The thought occurred to Fabian that if someone wanted to kill him at this moment he was almost completely defenceless because he was finding everything so unbelievably hilarious, and he had this mental image of a Death Eater apparating right this instant and he would simply double up in laughter, forgetting all command of magic.

Tony pushed him up a flight of stairs, all while beseeching him to stop giggling. In turn he accused Tony of tickling him, and Fabian seemed to enjoy having Tony push at him here and there with a rough hand at all parts of his body, and began to push back teasingly. They reached a door, where Tony asked him to take off his shoes, to which he complied, bemused. What a meticulous and clean person Tony must be, he thought.

They found themselves in a tiny bedroom, occupied mostly by a single bed to the right and a desk to the left. The long end of the desk was up against the wall and the short end was next to a window, where light from passing cars shone in intermittently and the blare of sirens could be heard. Fabian sat down in one great plop on the bed, which turned out to have a rather thin mattress and an extremely springy support.

Fabian broke into a wide smile at Tony, who was staring very intently at him in the dark. He was aware of the fact that Tony was removing the layers upon layers of woollen jumpers that swathed him, so he eagerly began stripping himself of his clothes as well.

When he was nude, he spread himself out on the bed and gave his best impression of an alluring look in Tony's general direction. Tony had been obsessed with folding all his clothes into neat squares, which he stacked on the chair by his desk, and this delayed his rate of clothing removal. He finally ceased altogether when he still had two layers of sweaters on and his trousers were fully untouched. When he saw Fabian _au naturel_ on his bed he had a look of surprise on his face.

Fabian was slightly bewildered. Were they not here to do the down and dirty? He looked at Tony's surprised face, understood, and said reassuringly, "It's okay if you don't want to do anything. I will just get up and leave."

Fabian sat up again and fumbled around for his clothes. It was at this point that Tony grabbed him by the arm to stop him.

"You don't have to leave," Tony whispered into his ear, hot breath trickling down his neck unsettlingly close. Fabian raised his head to look him in the eye but in doing so found Tony's lips pressed against his face, his fingers digging firmly into his arm, and his other hand slipping down his torso and my god, my god, my god.

"Stop! Halt! Cease! Stop stop stop stop!" Ron exclaimed, fading into a whimper, hands pressed firmly against his ears. "I don't need to hear about that."

Dolohov looked at him smugly. "I thought you insisted on knowing every detail."

"Not _that_," Ron wailed, as Harry squirmed around uneasily in his seat. "Just skip the...bonking bits next time."

Hermione found herself leaning perhaps a little too far front and pulled herself back into her chair. She looked down at the floor with shifty eyes, and then cleared her throat. "Yes, we do recommend you skip the physical segments and concentrate on describing the factors at play."

"What factors at play?" Dolohov scoffed. "Look, the truth is all we ever did was shag each other. Repeatedly. Time and again. Many times over. But nothing else, okay?"

Harry had to stifle a snort. "Is this just like Romeo and Juliet, but the porno version?" he asked pruriently.

"Thus from my cock, by thine, my sin is purged," Hermione added, with much amusement.

Ron looked like he wanted to burrow into the ground and never come up again.


	32. Chapter 31

Antonin opened his eyes. The water was murky with stale soap and scrubbed-off grime, and he pushed about it with his hands, causing it to ripple. He blew out with his nose, and tried to pop the bubbles underwater.

Suddenly, the water darkened as a figure appeared to block out the light. Antonin sighed, letting out a few more air bubbles, but persisted in staying underwater. Seconds passed, and then minutes. His lungs were burning now, and his head was feeling faint, and he wished he could hide here, underneath, forever but—

—with a great big gasp, he surfaced for air. The bathwater sluiced down his hair and body in great sheets.

The Dark Lord hovered at the rim of the bathtub, seemingly oblivious to his shameful state of undress, coddled by the undulating, translucent, greyish bathwater.

"I cannot fathom why any person might care to spend two hours in the bath," the Dark Lord began. "Where are my reports? My scene-by-scene analysis?"

The Dark Lord looked down at him through his nose. His piercing gaze seemed almost to cut into his skin, and Antonin was overcome with shame. He worried that the Dark Lord could smell the filth of another man on him, that the Dark Lord could sense that he had defiled himself yet again with the body of another last night, no matter how hard he tried to scrub it off in the bath. With a flick of his wand he summoned a towel, and climbed out of the bath, wet and sopping, to dry himself. The Dark Lord made no pretence of averting his gaze, as he continued to stare at Antonin like he was fully deserving of the shame he felt in being so naked in front of his Lord.

When he was dry enough he let his towel drop to the floor as he slipped his robes over his head. He felt so small and violated and he wanted to throw himself on the ground and kiss the robes of his Dark Lord and beg for forgiveness and ask for him to stop looking at him in that way because it was killing him inside.

The Dark Lord continued as if he was fully unaware of the humiliation he was inflicting on Antonin even though he could only have meant this deliberately so.

"Malfoy has proposed a fee hike in member's dues, and Avery has proposed we unify our way of dress. Lestrange is concerned about the education of the younglings. She thinks they need remedial sessions in the Dark Arts, Antonin."

Antonin had followed the Dark Lord out of the bathroom and was duly keeping pace behind him as they wound through the Georgian manor that used to belong to the Riddle family. The Dark Lord took him upstairs into the study where he summoned several rolls of parchment into Antonin's arms, followed by a quill, and three pots of ink that clattered into him so hard they nearly spilled over. Slipping out of the study, the Dark Lord headed down into the pantry where he downed a small goblet of life-extending potion made of blood-coloured berries, and then bounded up the stairs at quick pace into the dining hall. The meeting was not due to start in another twenty minutes but the Dark Lord loved to be unsettlingly early, glaring from the head of the table at all who had the cheek to be merely punctual as they sheepishly filed in from the fireplace.

There was a trick to it, and the ones who would be the most loyal were always present and seated upon his entering of the room. On entering, they split ways, the Dark Lord heading right to encircle the table while Antonin headed left and made a beeline for the corner edge from where he recorded the minutes of every meeting. The good thing about being him was that it was his duty to arrive trailing few steps behind the Dark Lord, but the downside was in having to put up with the Dark Lord keeping a close eye on his daily ablutions and such whenever he chose to stay.

Pleased with the loyal followers who were already in place and rapt with attention, the Dark Lord took his seat. At his right was Bellatrix Lestrange, and at his left was Rodolphus Lestrange. Death Eaters of decreasing rank ran down the length of the ancient oak table, polished to a fine degree and decorated with ornate carvings. Wedged diagonally in between Rodolphus Lestrange and the Dark Lord at the left corner was him, Antonin Dolohov, of debatable rank and certainly in age the least senior.

He was painfully aware that the rest of the Death Eaters regarded him with some snobbery. He was not of an illustrious family and he did not have the means at his disposal to support the Dark Lord the way some of them did. This was the inner circle, the most exclusive, prestigious collection of the Dark Lord's associates and he always seemed a rogue entrant.

The meeting was duly begun and the post-mortem of the St Mungo's attack began. The good part of it was that despite being unable to get to Dumbledore, they managed to obtain everything else they intended to. It was not as if they were foolish enough to place priority on assassinating Dumbledore that night, and they had worked out a multi-pronged strategy so that they were guaranteed of at least one benefit. They were granted at least three: they were well on their way to amassing the critical number of corpses for an army of Inferi, in the pandemonium of emergency evacuations they had snuck in to access confidential medical records and they had also made off with several rare antidotes and blood samples that were the real reason for the attack. Finally, there was the inadvertent revelation of key members of Dumbledore's secret organisation. They had a fool of a Prophet journalist to thank for proving their hunch right.

Several Death Eaters were discharged with the care of the precious antidotes and blood samples, and they moved down the agenda to the other issues. The question of the younglings came up again, and it was Nott's idea that Antonin, being the youngest in the room, would have the clearest idea of how to get along with the youth of the day and therefore he would be in charge of the Dark Arts remedial sessions.

It was with glee that Lestrange added on that they would subject his tutees to an admission test, so to speak, in a few months or so, to see that Antonin was serious about his commitment to the Death Eaters.

Malfoy added on that he could charge a small fee for this tutelage, as the entire inner circle knew he struggled with a backlog of unpaid member's dues. Malfoy was hardly any older than him, yet, armed with his privileged upbringing, had all the airs of someone much older and more accomplished. This was his first meeting as part of the inner circle, though he was present in place of his ailing father.

It was at times like these that Antonin wished the Dark Lord would say something for him, to tell them that they were being unfair to him and that he was a special case, but the Dark Lord never said anything in his defence, presumably because it was unwise to offend the inner circle when he still depended on their clout to advance his plans. Antonin thought of the day when the Dark Lord would ascend into power and he thought of the recognition he might finally receive as his longest-serving servant.

Sometimes, he missed the days when it was just the two of them wandering through the forests in Albania, or crawling through the snowdrifts in winter in Finland, when their world was smaller and ambition just a word and politics far from the mind.


	33. Chapter 32

In addition to the fee hike, Malfoy was proposing a loyalty bonus scheme, in which Death Eaters who proved themselves to be the most loyal would receive bonuses either paid in cash or in gifts. Malfoy put it across that the bonus scheme would produce better-motivated devotees and serve as recognition for hard work. The plan sounded reasonable and the Dark Lord agreed to put it to the vote, and it passed with an overwhelming majority.

Antonin wondered if the Dark Lord was as bored by these seemingly trivial issues as he was. It would be nice if someone could say that all this stuff about membership fees and attendance rates and discipline channels were insignificant in light of their true goal, which was to demonstrate the superiority of the pure magical being. It was to transcend the tedium of daily life and to defy the constraints of the filthy human body. If they could achieve a state of being that was of the purest spirit, immortal and infused with great power, and show the rest of the world how filthy and inferior they were, beholden to weak human bodies that were full of need and uncontrollable want, yes, that would be their gift to the world.

And yet it was his current lot to be the minute taker and secretary to the Dark Lord, thereby shielding his Lord from the taint of banality. He was not one to complain, however, he had faith that his devotion would one day be greatly rewarded.

The meeting was ended and they were dismissed. Free to return to the outside world to live exemplary lives in the eyes of their Lord, the ranks of Death Eaters filed out of the room.

Abruptly, there was a hiss from the floor, and each one of them froze on the spot. After the Dark Lord, none so terrified their hearts as Nagini, the giant serpent who was ever present in her silent way. On occasion, she hissed, speaking exclusively in Parseltongue to the Dark Lord, and silence would instantly befall. No one wanted to cross Nagini, that was certain, and she only hissed when she was cross.

"Mal_foy_," the Dark Lord called out, in a low, even voice, drawing out the last syllable. There was nothing as terrifying as when the Dark Lord's voice took on an even, reasoned tone, for this happened only when he was past the point of tolerance.

Malfoy turned with a great deal of dread. He was nearly quaking in his boots, and he looked ready to go to any lengths to placate the Dark Lord.

"Your boots," the Dark Lord mentioned, and at once all turned their eyes on his footwear. They were pointed, with a heel of polished wood and a scaly upper of python, which gleamed softly from the polish. "What are they made of?"

Malfoy began to stammer. "F-f-f-fishskin, my Lord."

"Nagini tells me they are _python_."

Malfoy threw himself onto the ground. "Please have mercy on me," he pleaded. "I thought they were in keeping with the style of the organisation..."

"You will do yourself a world of good to cease blabbering."

Malfoy nodded weakly, contrite, still bent over on the floor.

A spark of red shot out from the end of the Dark Lord's wand, flying through the air to hit Malfoy, who instantly contorted with pain from the blow. When he had been dealt the requisite measure of pain, the Dark Lord released him and the rest of them fled the place as quickly as they could.


	34. Chapter 33

[trigger warning (tw): this chapter contains bullying and implied history of sexual abuse]

…

The place was chaotic and unfamiliar. People crowded the streets speaking a foreign tongue. It was the busiest day of the week in this part of town, where the common people were out in droves exchanging and selling goods at the market. Customers ruthlessly haggled over a few pence to no avail as the stall minders refused to budge. This morning, at her bath, she discovered she was out of milk and she not sure this was the kind of market she was looking for when she haltingly asked for directions.

She was in London, a place entirely new to her. She did not speak the language, but she had a feeling that this would be the place where her search would finally come to an end.

She was looking for her daughter.

...

The air was spiked orange and dusty with tumeric, hot and extremely still, its pungency mingling with the scent of frangipani from the garlands that hung from the shops. It was the fifth day of the seventh month and the air was heavy with the kind of humidity that signalled a rainstorm was about to break.

It was high noon and in the heat of day he could smell the milk going faintly sour as he neared the temple. Masses of devotees had made the trip down to ask for blessings before they went out into the harvest. The crowds were here because rumour had it that this temple harboured a special stone that fell from a cobra, a stone that could bestow great fortune and immunity on the beholder.

It was perhaps a nice thing to be able to make away with, the special stone, but it was not for this purpose he was here this day. He was not here for physical items, for they would inevitably decay with time. He was here for knowledge, everlasting and immortal. He had asked the serpents and they had led him to this place. There would be a man with the answers he had been seeking. They said that this man hadn't aged in over a hundred years and some said that on occasion he could be found sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, looking as natural as a person could dangling from the ceiling, because when he did so it was as if gravity itself followed him upside down, drawing his robes and grizzly beard and long hair towards the sky.

He found the man in an unremarkable manner, sitting by the temple's gate begging with a tin can that used to hold condensed milk. Casting a shadow over him, shading him from the sun, was a cobra with a large hood. Her scales were of a delicate light grey and the span of her hood was dotted with two large spots that resembled an extra pair of eyes.

He spoke, in the language of serpents: "Master, I am here to learn from you."

The man looked up at him and said, "Son, you do not appear ready."

"And yet I will learn." He fixed his gaze on the man. He would prove himself ready, by force if it came to that.

Over the course of several months he made to appear as a humble and worthy student, and the man began to impart some of his wisdom onto him. But in his heart he knew without a doubt that what he came to seek this man would never reveal to him, and when he felt that he was ready to move on he did, slipping away silently in the dead of the night. It was on that particular night he helped himself with a ready hand to some souvenirs, things he could remember this place by and things that could be of use to him, unlike that wizened old man who spent half his days drinking a mixture of onion and banana juice, shrouded in flatulence.

...

In the cold blue light of winter's morning, after a fresh bout of snow coated the earth once more, he strode the outside of the grounds as was his daily habit. On this day, there was some commotion by the edge of the island, which was itself in the middle of a lake.

There were two large students, old enough to be from the senior levels, and between them was a young boy held upside-down from the ankles, one by each side. The boy was naked, and crying, and his pale skin was blotched with blue from the cold. The two older students dipped him into a hole cracked in the ice on the lake, holding him under until they deemed it satisfactory to lift him up again.

He was fascinated by what was going on. This is not to say that he found the brutality shocking in any way, and he approached them in a bid to observe more closely their actions.

When he neared, the two older students dropped the young boy in fright and looked like they were about to run off.

"Stop," he ordered, and they did, because he was a teacher here.

The two older students cowered, and went back to the spot where they had abandoned the young boy, who was now huddled into a ball, shivering and feebly trying to shield himself from the biting cold with just his hands.

"What were you doing?" he asked.

"We—we were just trying to teach him a lesson here. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all…."

The young boy was whimpering pathetically, his clothes nowhere to be found. He was turning blue and purple all over.

The two older boys hung their heads in shame, unable to find a proper justification for their actions. One stood staring determinedly at his boots, and the other kept looking around nervously, at him and at his friend and at the young boy.

"Tom Tomovich," the shifty one began after some while, looking at the young boy. "Aren't you going to do anything? He looks like he's going to die."

"Why don't you do something about it? I didn't put him in that state."

The shifty one immediately took off his fur coat and threw it over the younger student, who pulled it tight around his body.

"Tom Tomovich, do we have permission to return to the school building?" The shifty one asked. Lacking his fur coat, he was now shuddering from the cold.

"Yes, you are dismissed. I will make no record of this."

The shifty one took off at great speed, crunching through the snow and ice. The other one stopped looking at his boots, snapped to attention, and thanked him before running off.

Tom Riddle turned on his heel and walked back to the castle. He was at the door of his room when he realised that the young student had followed him all the way back.

"Tom Tomovich, you saved my life," he said. "In return I will be glad to do anything you ask of me. I put myself at your service. I am in your debt."

Tom Riddle stopped himself from frowning. He really did not have the energy to put up with these pesky students always bothering him about some unimportant thing or the other. If this boy could be so weak as to allow himself to be bullied in this school then he jolly well deserved to be left in the cold to die. And yet...he could have a use for him.

"What's your name?"

"Dolohov, Antonin Stepanovich." The boy sniffled into the oversized fur coat.

Tom Riddle unlocked the door. "Come in," he said to the boy, stepping into his quarters. He had to himself a small bedroom with an adjacent study. True to the Durmstrang spirit, even the teachers' quarters were sparsely decorated. The furniture was purely functional, and he had bookshelves upon bookshelves that he kept well stocked. Perhaps the only luxury availed to the teachers in this spartan place was heating. He stoked the fireplace with a quick spell.

Out of sheer habit he put the kettle on, and then realised that the boy was looking at him like he thought he was making tea for him.

"Why were you out there?" he asked the boy, mostly in a bid to wipe that expectant look off his face. He had absolutely no interest in whatever answer he could supply.

"I bested them in the term tests," the boy said.

The water should be ready now. He moved to take his tin of tea from the shelves. The tin was of an aged gold, etched with ornate imperial motifs.

"Where did you get that from?" the boy asked in wide-eyed wonder.

"Japan. It's _gyokuro_. They also keep completely silent during a tea ceremony." He felt a measure of satisfaction on finding the perfect excuse to avoid hearing the boy's meaningless jabber.

He prepared the tea according to instruction, and when it was done he poured a single cup for himself. He lifted the cup to his nose, inhaling its delicate aroma with his eyes closed. He was about to take a sip when his eyelids flew open and he caught the unfortunate sight of the boy staring at him with the widest-eyed, most expectant expression anyone could muster.

Heaving a sigh, he poured a small cup for the boy and handed it to him. Adhering to social niceties was such a chore. The sooner he could be done with this place the better he would feel. All young people, no matter their seriousness in learning the true essence of magic, no matter their intensity or hard work or claim to knowledge, such as those that filled this school, irked him to no end.

"Thank you," the boy said with a wide grin, before realising that he was not supposed to talk and a guilty look crossed his face.

With both hands around the teacup he took a deep breath, sticking his nose over the rim, then looked up at him to smile again. He took his first sip, bare legs swinging wildly under the chair. The fur coat, which was previously wrapped tight around his small body, was now split open at the thigh, exposing a thin sliver of smooth pale flesh.

"How old are you?" Tom Riddle broke the silence to ask.

The boy grinned at him. "Just turned fourteen," he said chirpily.

"And you said you beat those boys at the term tests?"

"I'm in the senior classes. So are they."

"And you're fourteen?"

"That's why they beat me up."

"Do they beat you up every year?"

The boy laughed merrily. "Yes, in fact they do!"

Tom Riddle was immediately overcome with severe dislike for this young boy. Something about his light attitude towards getting beaten up bothered him.

The boy seemed to notice that he was staring very intently at him.

"Do you get lonely here, Tom Tomovich?"

Tom Riddle did not deign to answer such a stupid question.

"I can help with that," the boy continued. "If you ever feel lonely here. I know what to do."

Tom Riddle narrowed his eyes, frowning. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I think you know what I mean, Tom Tomovich."

"No," Tom Riddle replied, drawing out his words slowly. "I don't believe I know what you mean."

The boy sighed heavily, jumped off the chair, and let the oversized coat fall to the ground. "It's simple," he said. "It's what men like."

Tom Riddle drank his tea noisily, disregarding the denuded boy in front of him.

"Please don't make a fool of yourself, boy," he said dismissively.

The boy tried to look at him again, but Tom Riddle was bent on ignoring him until he came to his senses. After some while, the boy pulled on the fur coat and returned to his chair, sipping at his tea, cheeks flushed pink with shame.

When the moment had passed, Tom Riddle leaned back into his chair and began to speak.

"It was for another purpose I asked you into my room, boy. Are you any good at catching insects?"

"But professor, it's winter," the boy began.

"Never mind the weather. I need bugs."

"Why, professor?"

"It was for this reason that I was walking about the school grounds this morning." Tom Riddle reached into his coat pocket and drew out a toad, which had been hibernating in a hole under a log, but was now awake and confused by the heat of the room.

"What are you doing with that toad, professor?"

Tom Riddle clicked his tongue, annoyed by the relentless questioning. "Can't you see it's injured?" He indicated at the toad's broken legs.

The boy took the toad from his hands and looked closely at it.

"Enough with you, just bring me some insects for her to eat," Tom Riddle ordered impatiently. "


	35. Chapter 34

Months passed and the winter finally gave way to spring. He had kept the toad immobile in a box, atop a layer of bedding, under which he hid an egg. It was not merely a chicken egg, as legend went, for he had learned the actual truth in India. Within the live egg lay a _naag mani_, a rare glowing pearl formed from pure snake venom, an essential step that could only be done with magic. When fused with a live egg, the _naag mani_ would begin to consume the burgeoning chick, and it was through the death of the chick that the serpent came to life. The boy was not the least bit aware of what was going on beneath the toad, though he wouldn't stop prying about the reason for keeping her. Tom Riddle tried to make it sound like he was nurturing an injured toad but in all honesty, he did not care if the boy believed him so long as he continued to bring insects.

Finally, the day had arrived where he, Tom Riddle, could cease to be pestered by the boy. The egg was about to hatch, and he thought there would be none more suited to bear witness to it than the boy himself.

Tom Riddle ordered the boy to sit and watch over the toad in the study while he pretended to head to his bedroom to retrieve something. Any time now, the egg would crack, and the fruit of his labour would emerge to look the boy dead in the eye. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. He did not want to admit it, but this was more thrilling than he thought it would be.

He picked up a book and kicked back on his bed. He was just a few pages in when he heard the boy's ringing laughter cut across the room.

"You were...you were trying to create a basilisk!" the boy exclaimed. "Better luck next time."

Tom Riddle flared up instantly with rage. He threw the book down and stormed into the other room, only to see the boy playing with an infant snake on the desk, resolutely alive. The snake coiled around his fingers, and then, without notice, bit down hard.

The boy began to cry out in pain, falling onto the floor. "It hurts! It hurts!" he wailed, trying in vain to pry the snake's jaws from the flesh between his thumb and his index finger.

Where did his plan go awry? He had followed the ancient instructions exactly thus the failure evidently originated from the boy. Tom Riddle stood over him, watching him writhe in agony on the floor from the snake's bite, suffering from a punishment he fully deserved. He had half a mind to deliver a kick into the boy's solar plexus because he hated the way he had laughed at him so mockingly just moments before, but he thought it inelegant in delivery, so he let the snake do her work. Owing to her infancy her venom was not potent enough to kill, and after she had run out she withdrew her fangs. Released from the snake's jaws, the boy sat up, bewildered and in wild disarray. He looked up at Tom Riddle with a tearful face, and, picking himself up, fled out of the room all while choking and crying, stumbling left and right from the agony of the poison.

Tom Riddle looked at the snake, who had been flung to the floor. She was a failed basilisk, he thought, bending down to pick her up. She coiled around his wrist, barely an inch in girth and probably just over one foot in length. He held her soft, dry body, gently rolling the length of it between his fingers. He squeezed down upon her neck. He could kill her that way, just by snapping her in two. He could end the life of this miserable failure and start all over. He pressed down with a firmer grip, and he could feel the snake resisting. She twisted and thrashed her body about, and hissed in pain.

Suddenly, there was a sharp rap on the door.

"Tom Tomovich?" came a fruity, unctuous voice. It could only be Igor Karkaroff. "I know you're in there. I need to speak to you."

Tom Riddle stuffed the snake into his pocket and let him in. "Igor Vasilievich," he said.

"Tom Tomovich," Karkaroff greeted sinuously. "I am sorry I have to do this but I need to warn you against being indiscreet. Now I do not want to be so strict with my staff, you understand, but there are some things I actively discourage. It is not proper for teachers to be doing certain things with ah, pupils, but if you simply must then please try to keep it under wraps."

Tom was getting impatient with Karkaroff, who bobbed about ingratiatingly as he spoke.

"It is unacceptable to have boys spilling out of your room looking so dishevelled and abused, Tom Tomovich. Was it only recently that I saw this same boy tumble out of your room with just a fur coat and nothing else on? I know some of these boys are nearly irresistible, just like angels, and they cause a lot of trouble just by being in this school but at the very least you mustn't be so brutal—"

"If you must be so blunt, Igor Vasilievich, I am not fucking that boy."

"Ivan Kasimirovich?" Karkaroff asked with a distinct note of surprise. He stroked his beard even more keenly as he pondered the fact.

"Who is Ivan Kasimirovich?" Tom Riddle asked.

"The poor boy that just spilled out of your room, Tom Tomovich!"

Tom Riddle paused to consider this information. Not that he cared, but he distinctly remembered the boy offering a different name when asked all that time ago.

Igor Karkaroff made a face. He seemed overcome by an anxiety about his reputation as Headmaster, being newly appointed to the role, and was eager to prove he had a faultless record with school discipline.

"In any case I must warn you about Vanya," Karkaroff continued. "He is a dangerous boy. Intelligent, yes, but I tell all my teachers to stay away from him. Male teachers, I mean. No problem with the females, although they dote on him too much like a son. It is not right for a boy to have a face like that. It incites one to inappropriate thoughts. It's not...it's not _safe_ to be around him." Karkaroff's voice dropped to a low whisper at the last words.

He looked Tom Riddle up and down, silently making notes in his head.

"You must heed my warning," Karkaroff repeated desperately. "He's not, how do I say this? He's not _clean_."


	36. Chapter 35

Antonin Dolohov sat on a small swivel stool behind the counter of Michael's Photo and Camera Equipment. He had one leg rested on the ground and another rested on the support bar of the stool. Wedged between his thighs was a camera body, and held between his hands was the disembodied lens. Breathing onto the lens, he rubbed at it with tissue until it was suitably clean.

His mind was preoccupied with thoughts from the meeting. He was annoyed that he had been involuntarily volunteered to tutor insufferable younglings in the Dark Arts. These students, products of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, were indisputably the victims of an inferior education. Though he did not manage to complete school, he held a great measure of pride at having attended Durmstrang, where he was the top-performing student in all his years there, where he was even accelerated a couple of levels due to his preternatural ability...

It was not untrue to say he owed his parents a great deal in that regard, though he had many mixed feelings about that matter. Had they seen him attend school they could not have been prouder, but they did not, and anyway he subsequently dropped out for personal reasons, so it was not like he carried any official qualifications to boast of.

He had not been in school for more than eight years now, and he struggled to put together a lesson plan. In line with his Durmstrang experience he knew that the key to success was intense pressure, for that was how diamonds such as those in the Urals were formed, as the teachers were so fond of saying.

He was dimly aware that a customer had entered the shop and was hoping Misha would attend to him, but the customer headed in his direction.

"So sorry to interrupt—" came the voice, low in register but wrapped in warmth.

Antonin looked up to see the redheaded boy from the other day, Fabian Prewett. He nearly broke into a cold sweat wondering how Fabian had managed to track him down in this muggle place. He spent his days away from the Dark Lord hid amongst the muggles, for that was where he was the least visible to the world. There was no way anyone was supposed to be able to find him here, not even by magic.

"How did you find this place?" Antonin asked suspiciously.

Fabian looked taken aback. "You er, you gave me a number? On the felly—sorry, telephone. I dialled that number looking for you, and Mary said you worked here sometimes."

"Who's Mary?" Antonin asked, suspicion growing.

"I...I have no idea, actually. Your mother? The person who lives at your place?"

Antonin thought for a while. "Do you mean Rizwana?"

"Perhaps! Who is Rizwana?"

"My landlord. She has got to stop doing that, she always telling people she's Mary," he muttered to himself.

"Oh," said Fabian, looking down at his shoes. After a while, he picked his head up and thrust a package in Antonin's face.

"Here are your sheets! Freshly laundered, spic and span, as good as new," he declared, then dropping his voice to a stage whisper, with a waggle of the eyebrows thrown in for extra effect, he continued, "No one will be any the wiser about what we did on it."

Antonin looked up at Fabian, inwardly vexed.

"I'm in the middle of work here."

"Aha!" Fabian exclaimed brightly. "It just so happens that I am in search for a camera. Do you think you might be able to help?"

This was all too convenient, Antonin thought. One of the enemy just showing up at his workplace suddenly deciding he wanted to purchase a camera. He should have killed him like he meant to the other day before he got sidetracked.

"What kind of camera do you need?" Antonin asked with a surly face.

"Ahh," Fabian said lightly. "It's for work..."

"What model? What functions? What price range are you looking at? What is the exact purpose of its use?"

Fabian batted his eyelashes coyly, as he pressed a finger into his freckled cheek, pondering the options on display.

"I don't actually know. I do think it would be useful for work however. Say, you're the camera expert, aren't you?"

"I could help if you give me more information. What do you do anyway?"

Fabian smiled at him mysteriously. This was beginning to get on Antonin's nerves.

"It's terrible...the work I do," Fabian said vaguely, maintaining an aura of coyness.

"I'm sorry, I can't help you unless you tell me something."

Fabian spread himself on the glass counter in a sudden move, propping his chin flirtatiously with one hand. His bottom, which was mostly flat and shapeless, protruded over the edge into the air. "Say...if I buy a camera from you...will you go out with me?"

How on earth could anyone be so infuriating?!

Antonin grabbed a camera and put it in front of Fabian.

"Look, just get this. It is very high quality, Made in Germany. It is fully manual, you can operate it in the harshest conditions. If you buy this today I will throw in some accessories for free, like a cleaning cloth and a camera strap. Of course, you will need some lenses before you can start shooting, which I will be happy to show you. I recommend you also buy this light meter, as you will need it, being a complete novice."

"Ooh," Fabian squealed. "You are doing the salesman thing. How do I know you're not ripping me off?"

"Well, if you want something else, get this." Antonin pulled another camera off the shelves. "Made in Japan, this is even faster, with a higher range of shutter speeds."

Fabian squinted at the price tag.

"If you want quality you have got to pay for it," Antonin said plainly, eager to end this transaction.

"Which one gets me dinner with you?" Fabian asked.

Antonin looked at the two cameras. If Fabian needed something for his job, and if his job was what Antonin thought it was, the Nikon would be a good choice, but since he had no intention of helping Fabian out and he had every intention of getting he best he could out of this dire situation, he made a purely economic decision.

He put his hand on the Leica. "This gets you dinner with me," he said.

Fabian beamed at him. "Very well then," he said, picking it up. "I will get this, and we shall go for dinner."

"You're not going anywhere with that," Antonin said sternly. "Not before you get some lenses."

Fabian Prewett spent a horrific amount of money in that shop, but because he was terrible with understanding muggle money, he thought it was all fine and dandy.


	37. Chapter 36

Tony remembered that he was vegetarian and brought him to a busy Indian place. Fabian was extremely flattered by his attention to detail but Tony claimed he was the sort to never forget anything. They were halfway through dinner when Fabian realised just how much he had spent back in the shop. A lump rose to his throat. Gosh, he was such a fool, being led on by love like that. His darling angel had turned out to be a greedy svengali. He looked across the table, past the samosas and the channa masala and saag paneer at the cruel man opposite.

"Oh god," he emitted uncontrollably. "I may have exceeded my spending allowance today."

Tony looked at him. The charming thing about Tony was that for the most part of the day he seemed to have only one expression, which was a semi-scowl with furrowed brows. He looked like he was constantly in pain, and it was the kind of look that made Fabian feel like cuddling him and whispering sweet nothings into his elfin ears to make him smile.

It was at this point of the meal when a twinge of guilt struck Antonin's stone-cold heart.

"I'm sorry, it was my fault. I'll pay for dinner," he offered, looking into Fabian's fretful face. His auburn brows were knit together and his mottled face was kind of scrunched up, and his cheeks were looking unusually appley.

"God I am such a fool," Fabian continued to say, sinking into despair.

"I cannot disagree with that," Antonin said.

Fabian looked up at him with a self-deprecating smile. "Oh god," he repeated, unable to withstand the torment of that beautiful face that was looking right at him, turning his face into the palm of the hand that was resting atop the table holding a cigarette.

Antonin began to laugh at him, mostly out of meanness, but as he did his heart softened and he almost had to stop himself from reaching across the table to touch those freckled apple cheeks.

"Oh fuck you," Fabian said in the gentlest tone Antonin had ever heard accompanying a swear word. "You know I haven't quite recovered from the previous time."

"Recovered?" The frown on Antonin's face deepened.

Fabian gave him a cheeky grin, and then pulled down his scarf to reveal a cluster of bruises on the lower neck.

"Did I do that?" Antonin asked, hoping he injected enough horror to pass it off as unintentional.

"You may have, yeah. But you're lucky, because I do like some rough handling now and then. I really don't advise doing this to other people on the other hand. They might get quite cross." Fabian pursed his lips primly upon saying that.

Antonin felt his blood run cold, frozen by fear and sudden confusion. What was he to do now? He had failed to kill an enemy when he saw one and now this enemy was entirely unafraid of him and seemed to be begging for more abuse. It was probably a good idea, now that the kill-the-enemy thing wasn't working, to come across more like a normal person. Somewhat less violent. Normal. Not violent. But then again, he did just say he liked rough handling. Who on earth voluntarily submits to that?

He was aware that Fabian was looking at him with some amusement.

"You're so adorable," he enthused in response to the look of mild horror and disgust that permeated Antonin's face.

Fabian then dropped some obvious hints that he was hoping to spend the New Year weekend with him.

"We could go to your place," Antonin suggested, wondering if he would be granted access to enemy hideouts. The Dark Lord would reward him lavishly for this.

"Oh no! Oh no," Fabian replied. "As it is, I happen to live with my sister. And her family. She has a husband. And she has three kids with two on the way. It'll be too awkward to bring you home." He proceeded to put on an apologetic face. "Does Mary mind if we go to yours again?"

"Rizwana," Antonin corrected. "I'm not allowed guests. I doubt she knew you were over the last time. I suppose I could sneak you in again. She goes to bed at nine each day."

"Yippee!" Fabian exclaimed, and Antonin immediately regretted the whole sorry business. This pretending to be a muggle thing was doing him in, even though it was his best means of subterfuge away from the Riddle House. In fact, it was so clandestine the Dark Lord probably didn't know of the extent of his association with muggles. But it all worked in his favour eventually. He simply could not be detected by anyone with a magical connection. All he did was to pretend he was fully muggle, and hide in plain sight.

They were less drunk this time, quite sober, in fact, and when they were safely in Antonin's bedroom they were both overcome by a sudden bout of shyness. Fabian was giggling nervously, as was his usual habit, so Antonin reached out to him first, helping him remove his navy blue peacoat and slipping an amorous hand under the layers of chunky homemade sweaters. With his other hand he pulled the lurid pom-pom hat off Fabian's head and a crop of ginger hair burst forth in a springy action. He slipped that hand around the back of Fabian's head, digging into his scalp and pulling him close, and then he suddenly recalled the criticism about his tendency towards roughness and so, releasing his grip, stroked the back of his neck gently. It was covered in a light fuzz, its ginger hue mercifully obscured by the orange streetlamps that shone in through the window. Fabian made a yipping sound like an excited puppy and tipped over into him, pushing him onto the table. Nudging a knee between his legs Fabian gently pushed himself up to straddle one thigh, rocking slowly back and forth, thigh against crotch against thigh against crotch. With light hands his fingers fluttered over his belt buckle, undoing it in a swift, practised motion. And gentle was how they went on this good night, on and on, until the light of day broke forth through the horizon, blazing in a rage of glory.


	38. Chapter 37

Antonin awoke to find himself greeted by a smooth, pink anus barely inches from his nose. The bottom this anus was attached to was white and befurred, and above, held proudly aloft, was a long swishy tail like a feather duster.

It could only be Tic Tac, Rizwana's pompous white Persian. This cat was far too regal for their neighbourhood, and when Elizaveta found her, she was in a terrible state with mites and mangy patches. Elizaveta was the nice old Jewish-Russian cat lady who trimmed his hair for him sometimes, and her house was already overburdened with too many strays and Rizwana agreed to take in a couple. Back then, Rizwana operated a corner shop with her husband, Farhan, and he helped them fix the shelves and take deliveries on occasion. It was Antonin's idea to bestow upon the felines the names of Tic Tac and Kit Kat, after the confections that could be found on the shop's shelves. The corner shop had since been sold to another family and Rizwana now worked in the garment industry, like many others in the area.

Kit Kat was a bicolor street cat of indeterminate breed, bearing upon his fur large patches of black and white in a rather unattractive pattern. Of the two, Antonin loved Kit Kat more, but Rizwana evidently spoiled Tic Tac rotten.

Sitting up, Antonin hoisted Tic Tac off his face. She meowed indignantly, and tried to paw at his nose. The door to his bedroom hung open with a narrow gap, and presently Kit Kat wedged himself through. As much as he loved the cats, he didn't like the idea of them shedding fur all over his bedroom.

Still holding Tic Tac in one hand, Antonin hastily pulled on some clothes. Scooping Kit Kat from the floor, he made his way to the kitchen, from which sounded a raucous bout of laughter.

"Good morning," he greeted cheerfully, setting the cats on the floor. He went to the top shelves where he kept all his assorted crockery and utensils, for his landlords were somewhat smaller in stature and were only too happy to let him make use of the empty space.

"Morning," an unfamiliar voice greeted, and Antonin turned his head to see Fabian Prewett wedged in between Rizwana and Farhan at the kitchen table.

"I was just telling this young man a joke," Farhan began, slapping Fabian on the thigh. "I told him that my nicknames for these rascals are Bad Cat and Fat Cat. And you know what he said? He said that I was encouraging a negative self-concept in these creatures and reinforcing unwanted behaviour. I thought he was serious, but then he was joking! What a funny young lad!"

Antonin failed to grasp the humour of the situation. He was the sort of person accustomed to maintaining distinctly compartmentalised worlds, just like how he organised his sock drawer with recycled cereal boxes as dividers between each rolled-up pair. This was akin to someone taking a peek in his sock drawer and rummaging it up so that it became a tangled pile of knit tubes. He had the wizarding world, where he had duties to the Dark Lord and other associated tasks, and then he had his muggle identity to avoid detection and it was simply a violation of physical rules for these two worlds to collide.

Fabian was target, Fabian was prey. He was supposed to have killed Fabian on that first night and do the world a favour by getting rid of his irksome presence, but when that failed he thought that he should perhaps cultivate some kind of relationship to use Fabian as an unwitting informant and that was—well it could still be done, but he didn't like the idea of Fabian sticking his nose into his private affairs in his Shoreditch sanctuary. It would have been far better if Rizwana and Farhan had chased him out at first sight. They did stipulate no guests after all when he first asked to rent a room from them. And he was in blatant breach of the rules here but they seemed not to mind one jot.

"Don't look so scared, Tony," Rizwana said dismissively, waving a hand. "I know we did say you weren't allowed to bring people home but we meant mostly girls. We don't want any hanky panky, oh no, but it's OK once in a while to be kind to your friends, especially those who've missed their last train home. It must be dreadful having a two hour commute each way."

More like fifteen seconds, Antonin thought darkly.

Fabian beamed innocently at him, as if he hadn't just been a filthy liar spewing untruths.

Deciding to be antisocial, Antonin took his slices of bread from the toaster, hastily spread some jam and margarine on each and brought his novelty plate and mug out to the living room. He really didn't like eating outside of the kitchen because the mere thought of breadcrumbs on the carpet could send a shudder through his spine. But he'd be damned if he had to stick by at the table and watch Fabian watch him with unashamed goo-goo eyes while Rizwana and Farhan inexplicably fawned upon him.

As he sat on the sofa he had to fend off the advances of the two cats who were under the impression he had food for them. As the toast disappeared into his stomach, he stared at the motif on his dinner plate, a popular villain from a BBC programme called Doctor Who. He liked the Daleks because they sounded a bit like his name, and their shape was also a bit like the first letter of his surname in the Cyrillic alphabet. Perhaps, he thought darkly, he found their philosophy perfectly agreeable too. He was a misanthrope and had no particular affection for any human.

Fabian shuffled out of the kitchen after some commotion in which he was rejected in his offer to wash the dishes. Standing by the side, he thanked Antonin for his kindness in letting him stay the night, thus saving him from having to wander the streets alone in this dangerous world. He went into Antonin's room to retrieve his belongings, bade farewell to the merry bunch of kindly muggles, and left the place declaring that he would tarry around town for a bit to try out the camera he bought yesterday.

He was barely five minutes out of the door when Antonin caught up with him.

Leaning in perhaps too close, Antonin offered to teach him how to operate the camera. Fabian gladly agreed, drawing the camera from the bag to hand it over. As he did so Antonin deliberately wrapped his hands around his, fingers intertwining, taking the camera from him in a sensual motion.

Antonin was fully aware that Fabian was looking up at him through his eyelashes, completely smitten. He felt a modicum of satisfaction that this was all going to plan. Humans he knew too well, especially humans like Fabian—easily susceptible to the follies of the flesh, desperately in search of a vague delusion called love that could easily be replicated through excessive touching and sex. It was at this point Antonin recalled the words of another teacher, who told him that there was a particular path, which, if he chose, meant that his body would never be his own. Now it seemed this sacrifice would be in the service of higher goals, for the Dark Lord had promised him not just immortality but freedom from the body, a time flesh would bind them no more with its unceasing needs and weaknesses, the ultimate endpoint where they would become spirits of everlasting truth and magic.

He sought to reach out to Fabian and make perfunctory touches when the moment allowed for it, and as they ambled along the Embankment all the way to Trafalgar Square, with Nelson's Column and the glittering Norwegian Christmas tree, he knew with increasing certainty that he had Fabian in his proverbial pocket.

"I'm actually new here," Fabian confessed. "I've only just begun working in London and I've never had the time to see it like this. It's great that you're willing to show me around, even if it's the usual touristy spots"

"You're new here?" Antonin replied, putting on a tone of surprise. "Where were you before this?"

Fabian looked at him with a shy smile. "Cardiff," he said, "if you couldn't tell from the accent—I'm Welsh. I was there for uni."

"Oh," Antonin said. "What did you do in uni?"

"Mmm, the sciences," Fabian replied vaguely.

"What do you do now?"

Fabian shot him a cheeky grin. "It's shit work, I say," his voice gentle and lilting, the way it often got the filthier the words that were to tumble out of his mouth. "I'm a civil servant with the Department of the Environment—Waste and Recycling—so, yes, it's all rubbish and shite."

Antonin laughed. It was kind of a clever pun embedded within an inside joke Fabian thought he was unaware of. "You must love it."

"I do." Fabian chewed on his lip ponderously, then continued. "So what about you? You work in a camera shop, you live in the East End, but I can't quite figure out where you're from. Definitely not Cockney, and your accent's a bit posh, like you went to a proper school but that doesn't explain why you'd live in the East End, and there is also a tinge of Scotch to it..."

"Scotch?"

Fabian pulled a face. "Oh no, I'm way off the mark, aren't I? I thought I was fairly good at this."

"Well I am from somewhere cold," Antonin replied vaguely.

"You can't be Geordie!"

This conversation was heading towards dangerous territory, Antonin thought. He had to steer it away quick or risk revealing more than he wanted.

"You look adorably confused," Fabian pointed out. "I am going to make a wild guess that you're not even from around here."

"What's here?" Antonin retorted indignantly. He had gone to all this effort to get his English up to scratch and he felt like he was on the verge of being insulted.

"You speak English far too well to be from these isles," Fabian stated. "Are you continental?"

"I'm not telling you," Antonin huffed. They had definitely arrived in dangerous territory. Perhaps he should drag Fabian to a small, deserted alley and club him on the head. That'll teach him a lesson for being such a busybody.

"You're tall and willowy and pale...Nordic, perchance?"

"I did say I was from somewhere cold."

Fabian nodded gravely, the cogs in his brain whirring. He showed no sign of abating. "Norway? Iceland? Denmark? Finland? Sweden?"

Antonin shook his head.

"Is Tony even your real name?" Fabian suddenly asked.

"Yes. Yes it is."

"What does it stand for? Anthony? Antonius? Anton? Are you German?"

Antonin desperately wished this conversation would end. He wondered what it would be like if he plunged Fabian's head into the fountain they were sat on the edge of and held it under until breath escaped him.

"Antoine? Antonio? Antonios? Antonino?"

Antonin shuddered. "Aren't you just saying the same name over and over?"

"Yes, but the exact version should give me a good idea of your geographical origins."

Antonin shook his head. His name wasn't even properly Russian, not that Fabian would ever be allowed to know. It was a semi-literate goon at the registrar who misspelled his name on the birth records...

"Are you...American?" Fabian said, his eyes widening to an unnaturally large size. "You almost had me fooled in that case."

"Canadian? Canada is cold," Fabian said, unrelenting.

"Enough with that. If you must know, I am not of this earth. I am an extraterrestrial. Failure to keep that a secret will get you killed. This is the only warning you will get."

Fabian's saucer-like brown eyes nearly popped out of his head. "No," he said, "You can't mean that." His eyes darted around nervously. In a low tone, he added, "You're not serious, are you?"

"I'm deadly serious."

"You're not Russian, are you?" Fabian whispered, whipping his head around in an extremely conspicuous manner. "You're from behind the Iron Curtain. You're from the Soviet Union. You're on the run from the KGB."

It was too late before Antonin realised that the expression on his face completely betrayed that Fabian was right.

Fabian seemed to be working himself into a frenzy. "The Spy Who Loved Me. From Russia With Love," quoting the titles of famous James Bond movies.

"Stop that," Antonin ordered.

"Why?" Fabian ventured, his voice abruptly taking a seductive register. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"No," Antonin lied transparently.

"I say, this calls for a vodka martini, don't you think?"


	39. Chapter 38

[trigger warning: mention of sexual abuse of minors (non-explicit)]

The door clicked open as a young boy poked his head hesitantly through the gap.

"You asked for me, sir?"

"Yes," Tom Riddle replied. "Come in; take a seat."

The boy scurried to the old wooden chair by the desk and plopped down on it, hunching over, drawing his knees together and sticking his hands downwards through the gap in his thighs.

"I'm sorry if the previous incident left a bad aftertaste," Tom Riddle began. "I was made aware that it was inappropriate behaviour and I hope you will forgive me."

The boy looked up him through the mess of his hair. "It's OK," he mumbled.

"What I found very interesting though, was what Headmaster Karkaroff cautioned me about. He does not know that it was the snake who bit you and thought I was treating you exceptionally badly."

Tom Riddle paused to make some tea. He was not inclined to waste another drop of his exquisite _gyokuro_ on the boy, so he had hid the tin and replaced its position on the shelves with some African bush tea.

"I noted with interest that Headmaster Karkaroff seemed to imply that being abused was a frequent occurrence for you. Forgive me for being so direct but do you make a habit of offering your body up to teachers for sexual pleasure?"

The boy nodded meekly.

"I am terribly sorry you feel a need to debase yourself this way, boy," Tom Riddle said, setting the teapot on the desk. He turned to face the boy, and crouched down just a little. He reached out and put his hands on the boy's shoulders, which was bony to the touch yet fragile and delicate. With a sigh he brought his hands down to rub the boy's arms in a reassuring gesture.

"Would you like to tell me why you do this, boy?"

"I...I..." The boy stuttered.

"Does this also happen to you at home? Was that where it started?"

The boy hung his head, cheeks flushed pink with shame.

"Would you like to tell me who first did that to you, boy? Was it your father?"

The boy nodded, then shook his head. "He's not my real father," he said.

"What happened to your parents?"

"They died. Bad people came after them and killed them. My current father came along and saved me, and he gives me food and shelter and he even had the means to send me to school here."

"But in return, he wants something special, is that it?"

The boy didn't say anything, but looked down at his feet, which he had an annoying habit of swinging wildly, or shaking up and down. It was as if he couldn't sit still.

"When I first met you, you told me your name," Tom Riddle said. "I did not pay attention to it but after I could not find that name anywhere on the school records." At this, Tom Riddle knelt down even closer to the boy and took up his hands, enclosing them in his. "I want you to trust me, Antonin Stepanovich, so between you and me I will call you by your real name, not the bastard name bestowed by an evil man who abuses you."

Antonin looked up at him, eyes glossy with welling tears. "Take me with you, Tom Tomovich," he begged. "Take me with you when the school term ends. I don't want to go back to that place anymore."

"My dear boy, I would love to but you have only just one more year of school to complete. It would be unwise for me to tear you away from what you do so well, after all, you are Durmstrang's top student and you're two years younger than your peers. You have a bright future ahead of you."

"I don't have a bright future ahead of me! I too died all those years ago, when they killed my parents and my sister and my grandmother. Now I live my days as Ivan Kasimirovich, son and wife to Kasimir Vladimirovich. I don't want that anymore, it is no life for any human."

Tom Riddle patted the boy's head in a consolatory gesture. His hair was a light honey brown and soft and silky to the touch.

"Do you sincerely think running from your problems will solve them, boy?" he asked, putting on a tone of sincerity. "Tell me, what do you think will happen if you run away? Do you think men like him will just give up and live the rest of their days alone? No, my dear boy, I tell you, men like him are no better than pigs and he will go to the streets and find another one just like you and do to him exactly what he did to you. Do you want that to happen?"

Antonin looked up at him with a face so full of innocence the sight of it would be more than any mortal man could bear, but he was no mortal man. What a beautiful boy, he thought to himself. _What a beautiful weapon_. This boy could prove to be the deadliest yet, only if one knew how to wield him right.

He released his grip on the boy and stood up to pour two cups of tea. "I've heard many rumours about you, and some about your wand," he said plaintively. "You swear to every single person on earth that it's got a core of unicorn hair, but I've heard from Anastasia Maximova that your wand really comes to life in her Dark Arts class. Do you think I could have a look at it?"

The boy meekly drew out his wand and slid it into his palm.

"Fascinating," Tom Riddle said, running a finger down its length. It was of a light wood, pale and nearly luminous. It was very old, and rough in texture, for splinters ran down its side. It had a core that emanated an esoteric darkness, formed of the pain and anguish of those who had met violent ends. "Silver birch," he announced, "with a core that is as far from unicorn as it can get. This wand is unholy. It is unclean. It is made with the hair of the undead."

"—Rusalka," the boy said, finishing the sentence for him.

"Indeed. And whence did you come by such a wand?"

"Gregorovitch, just like everyone else," the boy huffed.

"I trust you know what this means. Nothing happens by chance and this wand must have chosen you with good reason. You mustn't be afraid to use it, for you have been granted a special honour."

Tom Riddle paused to take a long sip of tea. When he was done, he put the cup down on the table with a clink.

"Vengeance, my dear boy," he said. "This wand is calling out for vengeance."


	40. Chapter 39

The muggles, as they called them here, seemed to have an inkling of her nature. She found board at a small inn above the pub and her hearing, which was sharper than most, picked up on the whispers of these superstitious creatures.

She bathed daily in milk, as was her tradition, and, slipping out of the bath she looked for her sari, white and black with flecks of gold embroidery, silken and translucent in form. Throwing it on, she began to make the myriad folds, tucking it into place. She had not yet met anyone she could trust in this strange land but she had met enough she could distrust, and these shady people gathered in the shadows of the alley of night—Knockturn Alley, as it was known, and it was where she was headed today. There was business to do.

The lanes and alleys were packed to the brim with humans and creatures of all sorts. Catching glance of a calendar through a shop window, she realised that this was the eve of the Western New Year, and having to wade through the crowd was proving to be too much of a hassle. It was not that she was unfamiliar with crowds but back home she could easily slide through the gaps and the humans would even make way for her.

The sun was still out so it would be unwise for her to transform, but as soon as it set she had every mind of returning to her true form.

...

Alice Giggs was on duty today. She was on duty because she was an Auror, and this was a typically festive day, where all kinds of magical folk would pack themselves into in the small square near Gringotts for a countdown. Already the skies were abuzz with pixies, in suits of silver and light, illuminating the walkways and annoying merry-goers whenever they saw fit.

Given that there was to be a high density of people attending and that this was a well-publicised event, there was a chance that of another attack by that terrorist group that called themselves the Death Eaters. They had already struck once, just a week ago at St Mungo's, and the Ministry was taking no chances with security. Hitwitches and hitwizards patrolled up and down the alleys in uniform and on brooms, but as an Auror Alice was undercover in plainclothes.

Her fellow Auror on duty this day was Frank Longbottom, and from time to time they made small talk, as they nibbled from a packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. They had been all through Hogwarts together yet never had the chance to interact much, not that Alice cared back then, for she thought Frank was of the typical Quidditch-playing ilk, physically attractive but overwhelmingly cocky and entitled, always in need of some attention.

She had to admit she was surprised on turning up for Auror training all those years ago only to be faced with the antithesis of her kind amongst the school tribes. Alice was the queen of the studious, obsessive, typically Ravenclaw bookworms, and she had with her an assorted harem of freckled, pimpled girls and boys, all cursed with some glaring physical defect or the other for which they compensated with intellect. These students were often the brunt of tasteless jokes from the sporting crowd, perhaps to mask the deep insecurity about their fleeting popularity, of the kind that would dissipate as soon as their looks or physical ability faded to leave them bereft of their sole definition of self.

During Auror training Frank Longbottom had proved his worth on several occasion so Alice could bear no grudge against him, but she was reluctant to engage him in deeper conversation. What she thought was that the more you knew about a person, the more they had you in their power, and the more you were compelled to like them.

That was not to say that she wanted for distraction, for distraction in her line of work was simply bad news and trouble all round. As the festivities were well underway, there was a sudden disruption in the corner of the square that led into Knockturn Alley. People were beginning to scream about a giant white serpent, and Alice was jolted into action. By now people had some inkling that the preferred symbol of the blood purists was the snake, curled on itself into the symbol of eternity.

Alice hadn't quite expected the Death Eaters to make such an obvious show when their previous attack was still fresh in people's minds. Security was also much tighter today so the perpetrators of today's incident had little chance of escaping. She chased down Knockturn Alley to where the crowd pointed her, and she found herself on the edge of a ring of angry humans surrounding an elderly lady wearing a white sari.

"I know she's a snake!" someone yelled from the crowd.

"I saw her transform with my very own eyes!"

"She must be with one of them!"

"She must be here to cause trouble!"

One of the Hitwitches stepped forward to approach this lady. "Ma'am, I have no choice but to place you under arrest for disturbance. Would you kindly follow me back for some questioning?"

The old lady looked around nervously. She seemed extremely distressed, and another Hitwizard stepped forward to control the situation. Believing she was about to be captured, she suddenly morphed into a large snake and slithered away at great speed.

"Halt!" a Hitwizard called out, and she quickened her attempt to escape.

Alice, who had observed all this undercover, suddenly piped up and said, "What if she doesn't speak English? Maybe she didn't mean any harm but you're scaring her off!"

"Not a chance!" one of the crowd piped up. "She looks evil and she was hanging in Knockturn Alley."

Alice sighed, put on her Auror disguise, and chased after the Hitwizards and Hitwitches who were in turn chasing down the snake.

By the time she caught up, the snake had been bound and arrested and was thrashing around wildly. She suddenly transformed back into human form, to undo the tightening knots that bound her with human fingers.

"I know what she is! You must burn the sari!" yet another person from the crowd exclaimed, and a Hitwizard instantly set her sari alight. With a howl of anguish she tried to stop the flames by rolling on the ground, but the flames, made strong with magic, consumed the white silk into a charred ash.

Alice ran to stop the flames before this snake lady got seriously injured, and, flashing a special signal to the Hitwizard in charge, requested that he let her take charge of this situation as an Auror.

All this while Frank Longbottom had gone to ensure the safety of the fleeing and panicking crowd, and when things were more settled he joined her in taking this old lady back to the Department of Law Enforcement for questioning. True to Alice's hunch, she spoke no word of English and was in all likelihood just an unfortunate magical tourist unaware of the darker connotations of her Animagus form in this foreign country.


	41. Chapter 40

Night had fallen on New Year's Eve and after some alcoholic refreshment Antonin found himself being cajoled into visiting a gay club in Soho. Upon entering he found the place teeming with men, some shirtless and some not, some in sailor hats and some in obscenely tiny shorts of a sparkling, metallic lamé. The air was steamy with the sweat of men, and on occasion he caught whiff of something musky, or something sour-sweet, of myriad hormones ablaze. The music was turned all the way up loud, the beat of the music thumping to the throb of the heart. The crowds were out tonight for the ubiquitous countdown parties.

Lining the walls of the disco he could see contortions of human bodies engaged in obscene acts, in full view of the rest of the patrons. Why had Fabian brought him to such a place? It was rife with sin and filthiness, and he feared his soul might suffer yet another taint from being associated with such a place.

Fabian threw off his coat and began to shimmy on the dance floor, rubbing up against various men in a flirtatious undulation. Antonin felt horrified at this display of brazenness, and went up to Fabian to stop him from this senseless behaviour.

As he neared, squeezing his way through a leering, libidinous crowd with wandering hands he had to keep swatting off lest they land with success on some part of his body, he saw Fabian lean backwards, mouth gaping open from sheer ecstasy, onto a man who was grinding with much gusto at his shapeless, nearly nonexistent bottom.

"Ah, here's my dark Russian prince, come to rescue me," Fabian said, reaching out to Antonin to trail a finger down his cheekbones.

"Russian? What's your name, Ivan?" said the man who was grinding at Fabian's bottom, pronouncing the "I" like the visual organ.

Antonin frowned, as another man placed his hands on Fabian's gyrating body, dragging his palms down the torso to the waist and under Fabian's shirt. "Yes, my name is Ivan," Antonin replied, mispronouncing it deliberately. "_Ivan Sod-off_."

Fabian began to laugh but the other man became visibly annoyed. "Tell your boyfriend to share," the other man whispered loudly into his ear.

_I'm not his boyfriend_, Antonin thought, but the music was so loud he couldn't be bothered to exert the required energy to voice this thought. He grabbed Fabian by the wrist and pried him off that amorous pervert.

"You need a drink," Fabian said, tumbling opportunistically onto him, snaking an arm behind his back. Antonin was painfully aware that as they moved, heads were turning to look at them, or at him maybe, but this was evidently because Fabian was making a complete fool of himself by means of adhering desperately to any hot-blooded male in the room instead of any other reason beyond Antonin's comprehension, like his stunning cheekbones, for example.

They reached the bar, and Fabian ordered him to down some shots in quick succession. While watching him, some other man approached Fabian and started snogging him wetly with a lot of tongue action and Antonin wondered if Fabian had a reputation that preceded him? Why was he so popular here? Was he so completely in his element in this promiscuous, sex-driven place that he ruled the roost? Antonin felt some bile and recently ingested alcohol rise to the throat. The place was uncomfortably hot, which could account for the proliferation of shirtless behaviour, or it could be that the desire to be shirtless motivated the owners to keep the thermostat high in this place. He needed to get out of here before it became too overwhelming. He gestured to Fabian that he was going outdoors for some fresh air, and went outside as soon as he could.

The club being so full of people the entrances and exits were obscured, and Antonin went out of a door only to find he was in an enclosed courtyard where some other patrons were smoking and some were engaged in exhibitionistic sex. Upon seeing him, some tried to endear themselves but Antonin refused to even acknowledge them, standing alone all pure and lofty and unattainable.

It was the third time someone tried to grope his bottom when Antonin grew frustrated and stomped off back into the teeming crowd. He didn't quite know why he was feeling so indignant at this place—he was trying to comfort himself that the place disgusted him because he was a cleansed and beautiful creature of the Lord now, but at the corners of his mind guilt nibbled at his nerves that his former sins would always haunt him. He went back to the bar, where the bartender offered him a free drink with a wink and a nod towards the back room. Antonin gulped down the drink in one because the place was such a distressing assault on his senses but gave no regard to the bartender's proposition. Fabian was nowhere to be found.

He waded back onto the disco floor, where numerous men besieged him, all desperately flinging themselves at his body. It seemed to Antonin true that no one here had any dignity left in the soul. The mass of bodies was starting to seem like an amorphous blob, all connected to each other via some sexual act or the other. He had half a mind to abandon the place and leave Fabian to fester in his shameless frotting but he also felt a sense of heroic duty, like he had to keep Fabian from being wantonly defiled by this company of dirty muggles.

It was no easy task but he finally found Fabian in the loo, bent over on his knees and attempting to simultaneously fellate several men. As he did so some other man standing behind him gave him a hearty spank on the bottom and began tugging down his trousers in a bid for some penetration.

Without quite knowing why, Antonin immediately sprang over to pull Fabian away before the rest of these men could defile him further. Fabian was slurring and protested weakly at the sudden interruption of his orgiastic business.

One of the men grabbed him on the arm to stop him from moving. "Where are you taking him?" he asked gruffly.

"None of your business," Antonin snapped in reply.

"I don't like the look of you," this man said impertinently. "You look like you hate all of us. We can tell, you know. See, this one here, he is one of us and we love him, but something's not right about you."

"You can't say he's one of yours when you don't even know his name!" Antonin retorted. "It's Fabian, by the way."

The man looked to his side, seeking moral support from companions. "Fabian, is that really your name, Fabian?"

Fabian nodded, rubbing his nose sheepishly. Antonin wrested the man's hand off his arm and dragged Fabian out of the dank, stinking loo. This was a most unhygienic excursion, he thought, and full of stupid muggle impediments who thought they could have their way anyhow.

"Listen, Fabian," the interfering man called out as they were leaving. "I don't know but be safe, okay? Your boyfriend, or whoever this man is, seems borderline abusive. Or at the very least controlling and possessive..."

Antonin desperately wished he could use the Killing Curse on this man right there and then but it was impossible without blowing his cover. In his anger he began marching Fabian out of the club and all around in the cold night without much care to where they were headed. Fabian, for the most part, was pliant and submissive, allowing himself to be dragged all over town without much awareness of the fact.

"What were you doing back there?" Antonin demanded.

"What were _you_ doing?" Fabian whined in return. "Why did you pull me away?"

"I didn't like what they were doing to you. It seemed so threatening, all these men standing over you with their dicks out."

"That was entirely consensual!" Fabian whined.

"It's still disgusting," Antonin said.

At this point, Fabian looked up at him like he had been slapped. His lower lip began to tremble, and Antonin felt his anger rise to boiling point. Fabian was weak, and reprehensible, being utterly without a backbone. He was completely without dignity or shame, and he was so infuriatingly floppy all Antonin wanted to do was reach out and break him into pieces, just so he would know what real hurt felt like and stop bursting into tears at the merest provocation.

They were waking down the streets at brisk pace, past the rowdy and merry and violent celebrations that burst through from pubs and homes and corners. Antonin was beginning to rage at these celebrating ignoramuses. What reason had all of them to celebrate? Did no one know of the suffering that was written into his or her futures? So what if it was a new year? The day would be no different from the last and humanity would continue to rot, driven to destruction by their inherent defects. Only one knew of the way out, only one amongst them knew the secret to perfection and that was the Dark Lord...

Fabian was sobbing now, in full public view, with moist eyes and ugly face and flabby fishlike lips distorted and wobbling.

"I feel sick," Fabian wailed. "I feel like I'm going to be ill—"

"Get a grip on yourself," Antonin snapped impatiently.

Fabian sniffled, rubbing his leaking nose unceremoniously with his coat sleeve. "You're so cruel," he complained, bursting into tears. "What did I do wrong? You have no idea how much I feel about you. I get sick at the mere thought. My stomach lurches and my heart collapses on itself. All you have to do is tell me and I would do anything I can to please you. That's how much I want you to be happy with me but you're never happy."

What a sick, desperate man, Antonin thought. He probably threw himself at every single person hoping they would love his unworthy self. They were reaching the Thames now and Antonin wondered if it would be kinder to just tip him over and let the heavy water enfold him out of existence. There was no discernible merit to Fabian's continued living.

"I have absolutely no self-esteem," Fabian wailed, in a sudden bout of self-awareness. "I have no dignity or self-belief and I think that's why people hate me but I have no idea how or where to acquire these things. I just want someone to love me. Is it stupid that I think that if only someone truly loved me I would be fine? That all my flaws would disappear and people would begin to like me."

The night's festivities were dying down as the countdown was over. The distant shouts and cheers from drunken hooligans and partygoers were fading away. Trafalgar Square had dispersed, as did the crowd by Big Ben and Westminster Bridge. Today was the first of January, nineteen seventy eight, and Antonin had spent it watching a grown man embarrass himself in public.

Fabian suddenly thought it appropriate to hurl, for he threw himself over the balustrade and heaved into the Thames. That done, he looked pitifully at Antonin, who was watching him from a distance. He was calling out to be loved, to have someone deem him of some worth, the basest, crudest yearning of all humans when faced with the problem of ever-looming mortality.

Antonin took a step towards Fabian and felt him fall into his arms, warm and trembling. He led Fabian to the side of the bridge and sat him down by the plaque with the poem. Fabian reached out to slip his hands in between his, yearning to be held. Antonin wanted to remain defiant to the end, but he knew by now that this city he loved had a way of breaking people down in the early hours of each morning.

Grasping his hands, Fabian nuzzled into him. By this hour, the bridge was remarkably deserted, and the air so still that the only thing left between them was an unbearable tension. Searching for something or anything to cut into it Antonin began to recite the first lines of the poem, without even needing to look at the plaque.

"Earth has not anything to show more fair: dull would he be of soul who could pass by..."

Fabian sniffled, a soft, gentle sniffle, trilling with welled-up mucous in the nostrils. Antonin leaned over, in a moment of tenderness, and kissed him on the mouth. He could still taste the sick reeking of alcohol and burning with acidity in Fabian's mouth, but he kissed him anyway.


	42. Chapter 41

"Oh A-li-che," Fabian Prewett said with a heavy sigh into his vegan Welsh rarebit. "Would you be so kind as to offer some of your sagely advice?"

Alice looked up from her spaghetti marinara. When he felt the need to be exceptionally endearing Fabian always pronounced her name the Italian way.

"It's not some boy trouble again, is it?"

"Prescient as always, Alice."

"It's not prescience. I deduced it from the frequency of the occurrence."

Fabian sighed again and folded his hands on the table. "Do you believe in true love, Alice?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

"You're such a cynic sometimes, Alice."

"I am not a cynic. Cynicism is lazy thought and jumping to conclusions. I treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. I subject every claim to rigorous scrutiny and I decide based on the strength of the evidence. Love, for example, I believe in, but not the concept of true love as defined in the heteronormative, monogamous sense of a romantic relationship."

"Consider this, then, my dear friend."

"Yes?"

"I met a man," Fabian gushed. "Blessed with incredible physical beauty, the sight of whom causes extreme emotional turmoil within me. I think of him and I feel spiritually ravaged. It's like he's a soul-eating demon with the face of an angel, tearing my insides apart with despair and desire."

"Is this the main crux of the problem?"

"I'm getting there, Alice. Well. So yes, I met the perfect man, but I cannot tell what he thinks of me. He is so opaque, he just sits there and broods all the time in a deep, dark way. I wish I knew what he thought of me."

"This does not appear to be a particularly challenging obstacle."

"No, Alice no! I'm not done! The thing is, I thought he didn't care about me at all, because why would perfection seek to mingle with mere mortals but the other day he _kissed _me."

"Is that the only thing that's ever transpired between the two of you?"

"No! There was a fair bit of naughty business, but of the kind that means nothing, you know? But the kiss—he didn't just kiss me, Alice, he kissed me just after I had spewed my guts out right in front of him."

Alice made a sour face.

"Sorry, I forgot you were an emetophobe, but think about it—what kind of man kisses you on the mouth when there are still traces of vomit in it?"

Alice cringed. "I know you take that as a sign of true love, Fabian, but he could simply have a fetish for the stuff."

"That's awful! Anyway I don't think he's the sort."

"What makes you certain?"

Fabian scrunched his face in thought, scratching his chin.

"Were you drunk? Was he drunk?"

"That was the reason I threw up."

"Think of your liver, will you! It's not like you cannot hold your liquor so you must have seriously overdone it."

"I'm so sorry Alice, but it was New Year's Eve and also he drinks like a fish yet never gets drunk so all my self-restraint goes in trying to keep up."

"He's probably drunk too, just that he hides it well."

"Oh, I don't know, Alice. He's er, he's uh..._from the Soviet Union."_

"That sounds fishy all right, Fabian. You had better let me do a background check on him."

"Oh, I don't know his full name. I don't even know his real name. I just know him as Tony."

...

When lunch was over they returned to the office. They had some interrogation to do and Alice had invited some experts to help.

One of these experts turned out to be Bob, who was here to lend some insight into shapeshifting creatures. The serpent lady they caught that day insisted that she was not human but an animal, and Bob said that it was a western-centric viewpoint to hold that these were deluded humans who preferred their Animagus selves—in many cultures, he said, it was more common to think of animals turning into humans and not the other way round. It was therefore natural for a person to define themselves by what they saw as their primary form, and for this woman it was the snake.

The other expert Alice called down was the magical representative from the Indian embassy, however he seemed a little fearful of talking to the snake lady. Eventually, it seemed that though she claimed to be from Pune, she could barely understand a word of Marathi, Hindi, Gujarathi or English. Neither did she have any official travel documentation with her, so there was trouble in even making a case to send her back to her home country. Bob suggested that she might be a Parselmouth, but hardly any could be found these days and the ones the Indian consular had heard of had no means of long distance communication.

They decided that they would detain her in a low-security centre until they could locate a next-of-kin to take her home.

After the interview, Bob stopped by Fabian's table to ask him out to dinner, surreptitiously putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it affectionately when he thought no one was looking. It was at this point Fabian remembered that he was supposed to have spent New Year's Eve at Bob's place with his parents.

...

And so it was that Fabian found himself locked in Bob's arms after dinner, hot breath against hot skin, pushed up against a wall, gasping, moaning.

"I want you," Bob said. "Fuck, I've missed you even though it's been only a week. I want you on me, I want to fill you so deep, I want to make you come without even touching yourself." He nibbled on Fabian's earlobe and squeezed his right butt cheek and thrust his crotch against Fabian's crotch.

Fabian spread his legs apart, wider, and threw his head back against the wall, mouth gaping. Bob kissed him down the exposed flesh on the neck, and sucked at his clavicles. Bob was big, and strong, and he put his hands around Fabian's flat waist and lifted him from the wall and led him to the bed, where he laid Fabian down and pulled off the last of his clothes. Gripping his ankles he propped Fabian's legs up and sank his head beneath the knees towards the crotch, taking the burgeoning tumescence into his mouth.

Fabian groaned and jutted his hips upwards uncontrollably. "Easy, boy," Bob said, and after a while flipped him over to lick at the puckered arsehole, which clenched and loosened tantalisingly. Grabbing a tube of lube he squirted some all over his cock, which stood at a proud angle and curved upwards with stiffness. He leaned over to kiss Fabian on the back, pulling his legs apart even wider as he did.

"I love you, baby," he said as he thrust in at full length, slowly at first. Fabian grunted and buried his head in the pillow, begging to be fucked harder and harder.

In truth all that occupied Fabian's mind was Tony. He wanted, he desperately wished that the cock slipping and sliding in and out of his arsehole belonged to Tony, Tony who gripped his hips so tight it could bruise and Tony who banged him like a drill, who kissed him open-mouthed and bit him like he was hungry, who fucked him like he meant to hurt him but couldn't bring himself to just at the cusp.

Fabian moaned incoherently into the pillow, his heart beginning to ache. He felt sorry because he wanted to be a good boy for Bob and Bob was sweet and always said he loved him and they'd been going out for several months now but it seemed like the age old problem of the grass being greener elsewhere and this was why Fabian knew he was imperfect and sometimes bad, and he wanted to be treated like a naughty boy who had done something horridly wrong, because he did all these wrong things all the time.

At some point he realised that Bob had been trying to flip him back on his back, so he obliged, but at the same time burned with so much guilt he couldn't look Bob in the eye.

"Are you okay, baby?" Bob asked with genuine concern, slowing down.

"Yes, I'm fine," Fabian lied, and turned his head to bury his face in the crook of Bob's neck, trying to avoid a reassuring kiss. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Tony, Tony's milk white skin and lean muscularity and surprising strength.

"I love you, I love you baby," Bob gasped, the way he often did when he was close to coming. "I love you I love you I love you."

Bob was going really quickly now, panting breathlessly. Fabian wound down on his cock, keeping them close, and gently squeezed Bob's balls.

"Oh baby, oh baby," Bob gasped, and Fabian closed his eyes and fucked himself harder on Bob's cock, thinking of the way Tony came on him, fast and wild and uncontrolled, messy and sticky and warm.

Bob wrapped a hand around his cock and began pumping vigorously, whispering to him and kissing him, as he neared climax. Eyes still closed, Fabian moaned and bit his lip, arching his back, still thinking of Tony, Tony's fastidiousness and Tony's hair that was lightly scented with apricots from his shampoo and Tony's hairy legs but sparse chest and the way Tony kissed him and the way Tony laughed at him and he would do anything to have Tony laugh at him forever, be the biggest fool in the world for him, if that was the only way he could hear him laugh. With a loud groan he felt Bob come into him, and at the same time began to crest on his orgasm and spurted into Bob's pumping fist.

"Oh baby, I love you so much, baby," Bob whispered, settling into the post-coital sweetness. "That was so good, baby, so good."

"Yeah," Fabian lied again. He felt Bob's arms curl around him, and he turned to look at Bob in the eye. Bob's face was shining with happiness and he kissed Bob tenderly.

_What was the price for forgiveness?_ he wondered.


	43. Chapter 42

"We call it Dark Magic, not because the magic is bad, or wrong, or worthy of fear. We call it Dark because it is still the magic of the unknown, the magic of esoteric powers that work in ways beyond our comprehending. It is the magic of extremes, the magic that works only in desperation, the magic that demands the whole of the person. This is the magic of old, the magic that has been and will always be. And it is the edges of which we try to harness for a greater purpose, to lead our lives beyond the mundane into permanence."

Antonin Dolohov looked at the room full of bored pupils. Here he had tried to recount Anastasia Maximovna's great speech in Durmstrang, the one that taught him early on not to fear the dark but to embrace it as part of the whole of life. Anastasia Maximovna was perhaps one of his favourite teachers in Durmstrang, and here her wisdom was wasted on these Hogwarts-trained imbeciles.

The parents of these bored pupils, members of the Dark Lord's inner circle, had procured a small room in the attic of a Hogsmeade shop where he was to correct the deficiency in the Hogwarts education and tutor these younglings in the Dark Arts. The pupils were here under the guise of the Gobstones Club (Recreational Division), and they ranged from first years to those recently out of school.

He knew that the most effective period of learning was right at the start of the class, so he delved straight into heavy theory. After twenty minutes, when he began to notice students dozing off, he stopped and picked out the sleepiest of the lot.

"You," he said, jabbing his wand in this student's direction. "What's your name?"

The student was large with a square face, and he sat at the back of the class, probably hoping the location would allow him to slack off. "Rowle," he grunted.

"Will you come to the front, Rowle?" Antonin asked. "I couldn't help but notice you were getting bored. Why don't you join me in leading the class for the next section?"

"What next section?" Rowle scowled.

"I like to mix things up a bit, keep you students on your toes. That way you'll never get bored and you'll retain more of what you've learned."

"Fuck off," Rowle said. "How old are you, twenty? You don't look like a fucking teacher. Is this your first job?"

"I'm twenty-two, but age is no matter because we never want to stop learning. Get up, you'll like the next part."

Rowle made a rude gesture.

"_Tarantallegra_."

Rowle began dancing uncontrollably, his legs high-kicking and tap-tap-tapping in a sprightly jig.

"All right class, let's all join in! A bit of dancing will get the blood flowing and then you'll remember everything I teach!" Antonin exclaimed, perhaps a bit too cheerily.

A sullen-looking teen with a large nose looked at him incredulously through the curtain of his centre-parted black hair. "Are you having us on? Is this what they teach you at Durmstrang?"

"These are highly effective methods of learning! Do it or I'll make you dance like Rowle here."

The sullen boy stood up slowly, letting the legs of his chair drag on the floor noisily as he did. Antonin gestured for the rest of the class to do likewise, and he made them do a few stretches.

"After the theory, it's time to practice! Into the starting position for duelling, pupils!"

The pupils shuffled into place, standing by their tables.

"Your stance is terrible! Your feet must be angled at forty-five degrees. This is the optimum position that lets you spring in any direction. Bend your knees a little, flex your joints, so that you don't lock your legs and fall over at first hit."

He looked around the room, as the students bent their knees slightly, feet pointing outwards. "Okay, now I want you to hold."

Some of the students began to exchange sideways glances. It must seem to them so trivial and insignificant, this practice, but Antonin knew well enough that those who did not have the requisite stamina would find their legs wobbling like jelly in a few minutes.

He stood at the head of the class, leading by example what the perfect starting stance was supposed to look like. His posture and positioning was impeccable, the product of relentless hard work and training.

Without warning, he jumped into an offensive position and flung a spell at a student whose stance was absolutely dreadful. This student, a wiry-haired pre-teen, toppled over immediately.

"Voila, that is what happens when you lock your knees and forget to move."

His point proved, he next went on to ask the students to levitate their desks and chairs to the side of the room in neat stacks.

"Your swish-and-flick is terrible! What's your name?"

"Carrow."

"You must not apply so much force. You do not mean to fling the table into the wall. You want to set it just at the edge of the other table so you can flip it over in a neat motion."

Carrow nodded.

"And you! Your flicking is insufficiently forceful! You're not moving feathers, you're moving a solid wood desk! What's your name?"

"Black, Regulus."

"And you're not even bothering to try at all!" Antonin looked to another student, who was listlessly standing around with his arms by his side.

"Rookwood. This is such bollocks, it's not like they don't teach this in school. I learnt it in my _first year_."

"And do you stop using the spell after first year? How will I gauge your ability if you aren't even going to demonstrate a simple spell?"

Rookwood shot him a disdainful look. "_Crucio_," he said, raising his wand at Antonin.

Drawing his wand horizontally in a short, straight line, Antonin nulled the spell while the red sparks were still at the tip of the wand.

"Your elbow is all wrong," Antonin offered by way of criticism. "You don't want to swing it too far to the side like you're pushing people out of your way. It makes you slow. You want to raise it upwards, so you can bring your arm down swiftly in the second move using gravity." He swung his elbow up and brought it down swiftly, repeating the move, so that the class could see. "Here, try it," he said to Rookwood.

Rookwood lifted his arm and brought it down.

"That is frankly laughable. Has the spell ever worked for you?"

"It has," Rookwood replied indignantly. "It worked on a dormouse."

"A dormouse," Antonin replied flatly. "That must have been a lot of effort."

Rookwood looked incensed with rage. "You're a shit teacher and we hate you! We're not here to waste time practicing stupid moves we do all the time in school. We want to do real magic. Dark magic."

The class began to murmur in agreement.

In a matter of seconds Antonin cast the Cruciatus on no fewer than three students, caused four other students to suffer from internal trauma so that they doubled over and began spewing blood, and the remaining two students had to grapple with the sensation of being burned alive with no visible fire to put out.

"There are no shit teachers," he said matter-of-factly. "Only shit students."

This seemed to enrage some of the students, of which the sullen boy and the Carrow girl began to resist his spells. The sullen boy fought his hold on the Cruciatus to hit him with some self-concocted spell, which from the looks of it would create a bloody mess had the aim been accurate. The Carrow girl fought her way through immense nausea and gut-spewing to attempt to trip him over, and another student attempted to bludgeon him on the head with a flying chair. See, the levitation spell is always handy, Antonin thought with much satisfaction.

"That's very good!" he announced chirpily. "You must always fight back, hit back at your opponent, resist whatever they're trying on you."

He let the class riot and rumble for another fifteen minutes before calling a truce and ordered them to put their desks and chairs back in place. The students seemed all too glad to be able to sit and rest, and obliged willingly.

"Now," Antonin began, "let's move on to a surprise test!" He began shooting rolls of parchment from his desk onto their desks. The students groaned.

"If you want a comfortable and unchallenging life, why don't you join the Ministry after you finish school?" he said. "If you want to be part of the status quo and do meaningless work pretending to help people while mostly waiting to collect a nice salary at the end of the day, just sign up to be a civil servant. We don't want you here. We want real soldiers—we want tough people—people who believe in change and want to fight for something they believe in. You have to show us what you're made of."

"Not by surprise tests," some student muttered, but Antonin glared so hard at him he nearly wet his pants.

"When you're done with the test, please come to the front and hand it in to me. I will pass you your assigned readings and homework, and then you can leave."

Nearly every student in the room grimaced at those words. This was worse than he thought. Could Hogwarts truly be breeding students of such overwhelming laziness? This was not the Hogwarts of the Triwizard days, when the three best schools of magical Europe came together in an impressive showcase of magical learning. Perhaps the end of the competition spelled the end of Hogwarts's competitiveness. The school was probably now languishing in the academic tables, without any awareness of how the rest of the world had advanced.


	44. Chapter 43

After the class, Antonin swung by Misha's photo store to collect the photos from the other day, when he had accompanied Fabian Prewett all around muggle London to try out his new camera. He had placed the film rolls for development under a made-up name, and owing to his employee status he collected the negatives and prints without anyone ever knowing what was in the packet. When the shop was mostly deserted, he slipped the prints out from the envelope to look at them under the table.

Half the photos were rather badly taken, and those photos conspicuously featured him in some corner or the other, sometimes obscuring the famous landmark that was the whole point of the shoot. Mercifully, he was out of focus in most of these. At some point in the day he realised that Fabian was mostly attempting to take sneak photos of him so he grabbed the camera from Fabian and took the rest of the photos himself.

Now, these photos, the half that he had taken, they were clearly superior in composition. The subject was always in focus, the arrangement of various elements always pleasing, so that there was no pillar sprouting from someone's head. Owing to the incredible lenses of the camera, some of the photos were so sharp Antonin could count the freckles on Fabian if he wanted to. There was one photo, of Fabian by the fountain on Trafalgar Square that was particularly arresting. Fabian was softly lit by the early evening light, positioned around the line of the first third of the photograph, and the background was of the beige of the National Gallery, adorned with sparkling Christmas lights from the Norwegian tree blurred into round globules by the incomparable bokeh of the top quality lenses. The photo had one of Fabian's nice smiles, not his ugly smiles, where his cheeks were slightly rounded in a flattering way that made his chin, and therefore his face, seem a little thinner, more pixie-like than gormless goldfish.

Pleased with his photographic skill, Antonin tucked the photos back into the envelope. He wondered if he could destroy Fabian's half, the inferior half, and tell Fabian that they were damaged by an industrial accident at the film-processing centre.

When the shop had closed for the day and he was done tallying the cash register, Antonin headed back home to put the photos down, and then went out for a Wimpy burger, which morphed into two Wimpy burgers, and then he slipped into a deserted corner and made his way to the Riddle House, where he had deposited the rolls of parchment from the surprise test for marking.

He went through the tests one by one, clicking his tongue and shaking his head at how substandard the answers were. With red ink he marked the parchments full of gaudy flourishes of helpful suggestions, even going so far as to correct their atrocious grammar (or "there grammer" as some of these students would say).

When he was done marking he started to feel a tad peckish again, so he wandered down to the kitchen hoping the Dark Lord had some leftover food he could pinch. The Dark Lord was not fond of eating, for he saw it as a symbol of bodily weakness, of slavery to ceaseless needs that would become obsolete in the face of immortality. Of what he did eat the Dark Lord preferred to keep it raw and simple, in pure and unadulterated form. It was not, strictly speaking, particularly filling, and most of it was rather lacking in the taste department, but on occasion the Dark Lord snacked on raw fish imported from Japan, from a very particular eatery operated by an old acquaintance of the Dark Lord's, via an expensive Floo delivery that required stoking no-heat flames. He used to send Antonin to collect slabs of raw, lean tuna from Tokyo until recent technological advances made it possible to send the fish over via Floo without heat interference.

This raw fish was one thing Antonin had in common with the Dark Lord, but the rest of his food preferences were as diametrically opposed to the Dark Lord's philosophy as it could be, so he often had to make pretence of not eating at all or face questioning from the Dark Lord, who seemed to note his weight with intense scrutiny. "You're getting fat again," he would often tell Antonin. "If you indulge in any more food Nagini will find you fit for consumption."

Antonin dug around the larder and found the small saucer of wasabi he hid in the corner, behind the wheatgrass and acaï berries. The Dark Lord was not predisposed to additives on food, not even wasabi, but Junichiro provided them free with the fish. As he had guessed, there were some leftover slabs of fish on a plate on the ground. Presumably Nagini had better things to eat, for the basement harboured an endless colony of rats, so Antonin picked up the plate and began slathering the tuna in wasabi, which he liked very much for its nose-burning properties.

Whistling to himself, he picked up the reddish slab thick with wasabi and slipped it into his mouth. His teeth sank into the chewy, candy-like sweetness of the tuna bursting with the essence of the sea, and the wasabi rolled on his tongue and then, sharply, all the way up his nostrils.

"What are you whistling about?" A voice asked. "Wherefore this mirth and jollity?"

Antonin spun around in fright. "My lord," he called out, suddenly contrite. He tried his best to swallow the fish but the wasabi was searing his brain.

The Dark Lord regarded him with much disdain. As was his usual way, he commented that Antonin's waist seemed to be thickening. Was his willpower on the wane? Did he lose so much control he thought it appropriate to steal food from Nagini?

"Please forgive me, my Lord," he grovelled. "But I was so busy the whole day I had not yet eaten until just now..."

"My boy, in moments of weakness you must turn to meditation. Do you wish to succumb to mortal weakness and let hunger to be your master?"

"No, my lord. I have but one master, and that is you, my lord."

"Very good. What do you think of the younglings?"

"Like diamonds in the rough, my lord. In desperate need of polishing."

"Very well, continue these sessions until they are fit for service."

"Yes, my lord."

At this point Nagini slithered into the room. It seemed she had some urgent matter to communicate to the Dark Lord, so Antonin stood around uselessly, wistfully eyeing the remnants of tuna on the plate, hoping that Nagini had had her fill and would leave it alone.

"The Ministry have captured someone who could be of great importance. I need you to bring her here, alive."


	45. Chapter 44

Fabian was about to leave for home when he thought he should stop by his desk to file some documents. His inbox was overstuffed with paper airplanes, relentless departmental memos about some thing or the other that he had no time to look at.

He dug out some case files and added his findings to them. He had gone through the missing or damaged items inventory and had a hunch that some of the items were missing for good reason. The hospital's medical records showed no sign of being tampered with, but the apothecary had some extremely rare items missing. He had narrowed down the list of concoctions these missing items could be used for, and they were going to have to make preparations to limit the effect of these potions, if put to use on a mass scale.

It was fairly late, and Fabian wondered if he could swing by Tony's place for the night. He had asked Alice to put in a personal records search for "Anton" and "USSR" but turned up nothing, no record of immigration or even of entry into the country. Alice said that this made Russian Tony an even bigger intrigue, but Fabian wondered if Tony was simply having him on and was actually born and bred in Romford or thereabouts and harboured quintessentially English parents.

He made a note to coax more personal information out of this mysterious man, and, putting away the last of his work, decided there was no harm in opportunistically looking to stay the night.

As he was on his way out, a group of Hitwizards dashed into the lift with him. Trouble afoot! He heard them murmur.

Fabian had a bad feeling about this.

The Hitwizards rushed out of the lift and off to their intended destination, and Fabian decided to trail them on the sly, ready to offer advanced help if needed. They ended up at the detention centre, which was in chaos, as all the detainees had been set loose and were running amok. Hitwizards and Hitwitches were struggling to put the low-level criminals back in their places, and Fabian pulled on his Auror disguise and sprang into action to help.

He noted with horror that the detainees, who were mostly in here for petty crimes, were being brutally rounded up by the Hit Squad, who seemed to enjoy the opportunity to deliver strong blows on hapless victims. He tried to stop them, but some Hitwizard brought a roughed-up man with a bulbous, bruised eye to him and said he was the one the Aurors had been looking for, the person responsible for peddling vampiric pornography that resulted in multiple victim deaths.

Fabian cautioned for the need to process this case via proper legal proceedings, and said that they should not resort to vigilante justice no matter how much they wished for it. A Hitwitch mentioned that she saw a snake escape through the vents, and something clicked in Fabian's mind. This was where snake lady was held! When her sari was burned it seemed that she had lost all transformative power. Was the loss of power perhaps transitory and she had somehow managed to recuperate in her few days here?

Fabian sped off in the direction where witnesses said they saw the snake, casting Reveal Charms at bins and hiding corners to uncover her trail of escape.

...

It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission but halfway through their escape the rescuee decided she had forgot something important and returned to fetch her things, which ate up precious time. Had they not turned back, they would be beyond detection by now, but they were not yet out of range if someone chose to exact a very well-placed Reveal Charm.

Lo and fucking behold, some meddlesome Auror was actually on the scene. This was supposed to be a low-level prison riot! Aurors didn't show up for things like these, unless they had some suspicion of particularly sinister activity afoot, which they might have, if they were at the point where they connected the symbol of the snake to their radical acts of citizen action and thought this snake somehow related, which she wasn't before, but she was now. It was his cursed luck to be stuck with Parselmouths everywhere, for the Dark Lord has sent Nagini on this trip with him and all she did was speak Parseltongue to the detention centre escapee, who seemed incapable of speaking any other language.

Nagini slipped off, leaving him to fend for himself, and the escapee—he was under strict orders to keep her alive. The Auror began to engage him in a duel, which was extremely pointless, because he wasn't in an Auror-killing mood today, just a do-as-the-Dark-Lord-said mood.

This Auror was surprisingly agile, and light on his or her feet, with an airiness to the way he/she/it cast magic. There was no telling if these Aurors were male or female or in between or neither under their anonymous robes of scarlet, and Antonin was not the sort to make assumptions.

His modus operandi was to end this as swiftly as possible without betraying much of his duelling style or other distinctive features. He was still some way away from the non-apparating boundary, and there was not much in the environment he could use as means of a diversion.

He flung open a manhole, heaving the cover in the Auror's direction, who deftly ducked and pounced on him. In a flash his limbs grew floppy, and he steeled his will to resist the strength-sapping charm, and hit out at the Auror with a powerful blast, which sent the Auror flying through the air and onto the road, where this Auror was hit by an oncoming muggle Routemaster, which pinned the Auror under the wheels and dragged the body around like a ragdoll.

Seizing the moment to escape, Antonin took the detention centre rescuee with him and brought her to the Dark Lord. Nagini was already back by time he reached, and he flared with an indignant huff thinking about how she abandoned them. Knowing full well this would be an exclusive Parselmouth extravaganza he slipped away quietly and left for home. On his way he stopped by the kitchen, but found the plate disposed of tuna.


	46. Chapter 45

Fabian awoke to find himself in St Mungo's, body wracked with pain. He must have broken several bones and the Skele-Gro was hard at work pushing them back together. His brother was staring anxiously at him, accompanied by his sweetheart, Marlene McKinnon.

"Oh, you're awake at last," Marlene sighed with relief.

"How are you feeling?" Gideon asked.

"A tad under the weather."

Gideon shook his head. "You were out for the past two days. The Healers weren't even sure you'd come out of this on the right side of life."

"You were dragged under the muggle bus for at least a hundred yards," Marlene supplemented. "No one noticed until it reached a bus stop where the passengers who were waiting to board spotted you. They called the muggle ambulance down, but thanks to the alert St Mungo's gets when magical people get injured they transferred you over in no time."

"I'm just glad you're alive, little brother."

Fabian crossed his arms and pouted indignantly. He was only seven minutes younger than Gideon but somehow was stuck with being the "little brother" as if they were years apart in age. Of course, Gideon had to have the reputation of being the responsible one as well, and somehow even though he was a proper field agent and not in the research desk like he was, it seemed he rarely needed the use of the special ward they had as Aurors.

"Have you been sitting here for days just waiting for me to wake up?" he asked Gideon.

"Possibly," Gideon said sheepishly.

Fabian looked at Marlene and mouthed the words "I'm sorry". He didn't want to be hogging Gideon's time, especially not time he could have spent with Marlene.

"We took turns," Marlene replied, smiling warmly.

"Oh, you're such a Hufflepuff, Marlene," Fabian said. "You really didn't have to. I would have come around at some point."

"We love you, Fabian. You're like a unique combination of little brother and baby child. We live in constant fear of you getting hurt and the idea that someone could even think of causing you harm really unleashes these protective instincts."

"Aww," Fabian cooed. "I feel so loved. I mean it!"

Gideon beamed with no small measure of pride.

Fabian grinned in reply, and looked away coyly. By the corner of his eye he caught Bob peeking in through the window to his room.

"Gid," he said. "Does Molly know I'm up and well?"

"Oh!" Gideon exclaimed. "I must tell her!"

"Yes yes," said Fabian. "Run along now. I'd like some much-needed rest."

With hugs and kisses Gideon and Marlene bade farewell and left the room. Fabian saw Bob duck off into a corner, only to return five minutes later when the coast was clear.

When he entered the room, he clapped a hand over his mouth in shock.

"Oh my baby," he gasped. "What have they done to you?"

"I'm alright, Bob," Fabian replied. "I'll be good as new in no time at all."

Bob gently rested a hand on his right arm, which was soft and tender, still sprouting new bone. Bob laid a wet kiss on his cheek, and hugged him tightly.

"Oh baby," he whispered. "I'm so sorry, baby."

"Don't be silly, you couldn't have done anything," Fabian replied.

"But I wish I could, though. I wish I could have been there, to stop you from getting so injured or to hold your hand on the way to the hospital."

"You're here with me now, aren't you? I think that's good enough."

Bob squeezed him even tighter. "I was so scared, baby. I heard the news through the grapevine and I knew I had to see you."

Fabian sighed and planted a kiss on Bob's mouth. "Sometimes you worry too much, Bob."

Bob shook his head. "It's not unjustified, Fabian. You have no sense of danger. You really just don't seem to be aware of how much trouble you can get into."

"I don't want to argue, Bob."

"Baby, I'm not trying to argue. It's the truth, you know. Someone's got to look out for you."

Fabian sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, relenting.

"I'm sorry," Bob replied, grasping his hand tightly. "I love you so much I can't even imagine what it's like without you."

And so they sat there for a while. Bob went to fetch some tea for the both of them, and when they were done with the tea, Bob looked at him with a mischievous twinkle in the eye and asked if he needed some _cheering up_.

"Oh Bob," Fabian replied slyly. Bob was so affectionate and so puppylike sometimes, despite his big, muscular exterior.

Bob grinned devilishly, and rubbed his thighs eagerly. "No one knows I'm here," he said playfully. "And I certainly hope no one is about to find out."

With that, he ducked under Fabian's hospital blanket and settled in between his legs. Pushing up Fabian's hospital robes, he tugged and kissed at his crotch, until his dick got hard.

A little self-conscious, it occurred to Fabian that his legs were splayed in a way that was rather like giving birth, with Bob peering under the blanket like midwives did, trying to coax the baby out, and he started to fear that some Healer or Mediwitch would walk in upon this scene in horror, unsure of what was going on. He felt Bob's lips wrap around the head of his cock, moving downwards, taking him in at full length. He felt Bob's tongue run along the underside of his shaft, unbearably hot. He groaned in response, watching Bob's head bobbing up and down under the blanket, his mouth filled with his cock, moist and wet with the sounds of licking and sucking and kissing.

Biting his lip, Fabian whimpered and climaxed into Bob's mouth, his left leg shooting out uncontrollably to accidentally kick Bob in the belly. "I'm sorry baby," he gasped at Bob, hoping he wouldn't bear any grudge against him for this.

When he was spent, Bob emerged from under the blanket to grin at him, mouth full of come. The sight of it embarrassed Fabian somehow and he sunk deeper into his bed, cheeks flushed, and pulled the blanket up to his neck, peering out shyly from behind it.

"I love you," Bob said warmly, springing off to the adjacent bathroom to rinse his mouth.

When he returned they kissed for a while, and Bob patted him reassuringly on the head, and fondly rearranged his hair, which was matted with sweat, then kissed him on the forehead. "Shall I leave you to rest now?" he asked sweetly.

Fabian nodded, still hiding behind his blanket.

"Goodbye, baby. I shall see you again."

...

It was another couple of days before they finally let Fabian go, one day ahead of schedule. His Healer, Fenella Thirkell, was probably feeling extremely harangued by his pleas to be released from care.

Having regained his freedom, Fabian nearly bounded onto the streets. How he missed the outside world! How he missed all that went on in it, change upon change at relentless pace, always new with more of the old. He inhaled deeply, seeking to take in the fresh air, but all he did actually inhale was smog and dust and more smog, but it wasn't like he really cared, as he was a smoker with lungs grown used to bad air. Speaking of smoking, he had not had a fag in some while and was dying for one.

He slipped into a nearby convenience store to purchase a pack, and, setting one alight, stood puffing away by the streets. How he missed this vice of his! Upon this thought, he realised that he had one extra day to himself as he had not yet bothered to inform anyone he knew of his early release. A frisson of excitement shot through him as he entertained all the naughty things he could let himself do. He ran off to Hyde Park, straight into the arms of strangers lurking in the lavatories by the Serpentine. Passing from anonymous body to anonymous body he let his body be used for pleasure, for he found much pleasure in giving others pleasure.

Evening fell and he removed himself to a pub for some alcoholic refreshment. The after-work crowd was filing in, presenting more opportunities for shameless hook-ups. There was a rather handsome stranger standing alone by the bar, waiting for his drink, so he thought to move in and make a proposition.

That man shook his head upon seeing him. "Sorry love, I'm waiting for my boyfriend and as a rule, we don't do other people."

It was an innocent remark, but somehow its delivery stabbed Fabian in the heart. He nodded sheepishly and moved away, just as he saw that man's partner enter the bar and kiss him lovingly. Fabian started to feel ashamed, and he also started to feel like monogamy was something beyond his ability and he was the worse for it. He started to feel guilty thinking about what Bob, who was always faithful, would think of him if he knew how he had been slutting away with all these other men.

The alcohol wasn't doing him any good now. Guilt gnawed at his heart and he had a sinking feeling. It was the kind of guilt he usually sought to absolve with the cock of yet another anonymous stranger, but on this day it was perhaps counter to the cause. As the night got on, he felt increasingly worse he was on the verge of wandering around muggle London alone, crying to himself on the streets.

He was such a mess. He kept making a mess of his life when it could have been so simple. He had a boyfriend who loved him, yet he kept failing this love by sleeping with strangers who had no affection for him. Perhaps Bob's love was too much to bear and he needed to remind himself that he would always be unworthy of such goodness and so he let himself be used like he was nothing more than a piece of meat with some holes.

The thought of it weighed down on him so much it was as if holes began to open up in his heart. He was deficient, always lacking something, and his heart began to yawn with a yearning, a gaping hole of lust and desire and of wanting to be loved by everyone he met. In his longing his thoughts drifted to Tony, how he had missed Tony in these days past and he was seized by the thought that if he could see Tony right now all would be made clearer.

Drunkenly and desperately, he apparated to Tony's general area of living and stumbled all the way to Tony's front door, and stood there wondering if he should ring the bell. It occurred to him that it was more likely that his landlords would answer the door, and they might not take too kindly to him showing up at their doorstep again, seeking to exploit their hospitality, not when he was inebriated beyond his wits and they were teetotallers. He remembered passing a telephone booth on his way here, so he wondered if he should use the damned fellytone, even though he seized up with fear whenever he had to punch in those muggle digits on that strange, impersonal contraption.

At a loss and overcome with sadness he plopped down on the pavement outside of the door, wishing and hoping that he had the courage to ring the darned bell but telling himself that it was too late anyway and the house's residents were probably trying to sleep and everyone would hate him for it.

It was at that moment he heard someone round the corner and walk down the street, keys jingling, and he saw a pair of battered boots stop right in front of him and he looked up right into Tony's eyes.


	47. Chapter 46

_Oh, great_, Antonin thought to himself as he saw this dishevelled homeless person clumped in front of his door. He tried not to harbour too much ill-will towards homeless people because he was homeless once, and he knew it was not the easiest life, being exposed to attack by violent blockheads with nothing better to do, but sometimes they weren't the easiest people to deal with.

He knew the area was rife with alcoholics hooked to cheap methylated spirits, who could sometimes be dangerous when they grew paranoid but on most days were sad, depressed souls, numb and oblivious to all.

As he neared, wondering if it would be wise to use magic to painlessly remove the person, he caught sight of a crop of unruly ginger hair and he felt as if his heart plummeted into his stomach.

"Fabian?" he asked, voice nearly a bark.

Fabian looked up at him like he was the saviour of humankind. Antonin was immediately repulsed and thought Fabian weak and spineless.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded to know. He couldn't have Ministry personnel stalking him at his front door, that could only have disastrous consequences for all involved, moreso on the Ministry side, but anyway.

"I'm in pain," Fabian wailed.

"Are you drunk?" Antonin demanded. It was at this point he really regretted not killing Fabian on the first night. He looked around. The street was deserted. Well, it was probably not too late to correct this oversight.

"Yes I'm drunk," Fabian admitted mournfully. "I hate myself. Why do I exist?"

"Honestly, I have no idea."

Fabian looked up at him again, eyes shining. They were large, and seemed ever widening, like they were about to consume the entire world with a deluge of tears.

"Get up, will you?" Antonin said. "You're such a disgrace sitting on the floor like that."

Fabian feebly stretched out his hands, asking to be lifted. With a heavy sigh, Antonin reached out and helped him up.

"Have you eaten? You need some food," he said.

"Gosh, you're so bossy," Fabian said, in what can only be termed as a tone of admiration.

"I'm not bossy," Antonin said, bossily. He shoved and prodded Fabian like cattle until they reached a twenty-four hour sandwich shop.

"What would you like?" he demanded to know, simultaneously taking the menu away from Fabian.

"Beans, on toast," Fabian said.

"Beans encourage flatulence," Antonin said.

Fabian had the cheek to protest and whine. Antonin got up to place his order.

After a while, they were served a singular plate of beans on toast, with some spam on the side.

"The spam is mine, are you okay with eating the rest?" Antonin said in a manner that sounded much more like a statement.

Fabian pouted childishly. "It was probably fried in the same oil. Did you check if they were using animal fat?"

Antonin looked at Fabian, who was swooning side to side before coming to a rest on his elbow on the table. Wordlessly, he got up and ordered another plate, this time without any frying or even butter, but just a can of beans emptied on toast.

He put the plate in front of Fabian, who looked at him like he was about to launch into a lengthy expression of gratitude.

"It's OK," he said, cutting Fabian short before he could even speak. "It was my mistake."

That done, he dug in hungrily into his plate of beans, toast and spam. Flatulence be damned, he was raging with hunger and would eat everything in sight.

"I have a boyfriend," Fabian announced.

"So?" Antonin said, realising that he had shovelled the food too quickly into his mouth and they were now wedged uncomfortably in his gullet. "Do you want a drink?" he asked Fabian.

Fabian nodded, and Antonin got up to purchase two bottles of carbonated soft drinks. "Is Coca-Cola OK?" he said, again sounding more like a statement than a question.

"Well, it perhaps is evident that I'm cheating on my boyfriend," Fabian began.

"Does he mind?"

"He probably will."

"But you've never asked him?"

"No, but I don't think he'll like it."

"How will you know until you ask?"

"That will end our relationship!"

"Wouldn't that make things simpler?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

Fabian sighed. "Have you ever been in love with anyone?"

Tony paused from the eating to look at him, but offered no reply.

"I just feel like he does so much for me, he loves me so much, so I owe it to him to be faithful, you know? I want to be what he wants me to be so I know he will truly love me, but sometimes I just think it's too hard, and I want to give up."

"Isn't it true what they say that the person who truly loves you will love you just as you are?"

"It's not so easy. Not everyone is so easy to love, as you are," Fabian said, with soupy eyes. "Some of us are ugly and full of flaws. The only way we have a chance at being loved is by becoming what someone wants us to be."

"Why am I easy to love?" Antonin asked, for he did not like to seem so unchallenging a person.

Fabian sighed wistfully. "You're so ridiculously, absurdly good-looking. Of course everyone loves you. Anyone who sets eyes on you almost instantly wants to make you happy."

Antonin frowned. In his experience, nothing of that sort had ever happened to him, not in the way Fabian thought, at the very least.

"You have a misguided view of the world," he told Fabian.

Fabian pursed his lips. "Why are you so perfect?" he sighed thoughtlessly.

Antonin frowned. He did not know if he was expected to reply, but he strongly felt he had something he needed to contribute.

"If I seem perfect it is purely the result of many years of hard work," he said, albeit slightly self-congratulatory at the many things he had forced himself to accomplish in his life, several failures notwithstanding.

Fabian looked at him, stunned. "What is this hard work?" he marvelled.

"Hard work," Antonin said evasively, for he could not go into detail without betraying facts he wished to hide.

Fabian frowned, and stared sadly into his bottle of Coca-Cola.

"You have been exceedingly superficial," Antonin began to admonish Fabian. "Looks are not everything. I could hardly care less about looks, for example. I think all people should be judged by accomplishment."

Fabian sighed. "Not everyone of us is so lucky in that regard, success eludes some of us still. Like me, for example. I know that when I head into work tomorrow I shall be lectured upon for failure."

"What did you fail at?" Antonin asked, suddenly very interested, though the fact that Fabian failed at something surprised him not. He often regretted his choice to let Fabian live, but it was for moments like these that he thought he could be useful.

Fabian sighed again, shaking his head. "I was careless at work and I was hit by a bus."

Antonin felt his blood run cold, freezing into numerous little icicles that pricked against his skin. "You were hit by a bus? When did this happen?"

"Several days ago. I appreciate your concern but it really doesn't matter. The whole thing was just really stupid."

No, not stupid! Antonin thought. He was besieged by extreme confusion at this matter. There were several points to be considered. One, was that he thought Fabian was a low-level Ministry worker, being so feeble and invertebrate. Two, was that there was some suspicion, amongst their ranks, that Fabian's twin brother was part of the secret Auror service, a division of highly trained spies to combat high-level threats to security. Three, several days ago he was engaged in a minor tussle with one of these shadowy Aurors, who was not merely skilled in combat, but showed signs of favouring the elemental style of duelling, which was not only extremely challenging but rather archaic and could be argued to be less immediate than contemporary duelling styles and rarely practiced except by particular eggheads interested in this sort of time-consuming stuff, and number four, he threw this Auror under a literal bus. It was worth considering that they had not heard of any deaths in the Ministry through the rumour mill so he assumed this Auror was still amongst the living, but now it seemed like there was a good case he wasn't just sleeping with the enemy as a term of expression but had slept with someone whose job scope put him exactly at the opposing end of where he stood.

It then followed that he should, for the sake of sanity, stop this sleeping around business at once and find some way of really putting this target to work, whether by bringing him to the Dark Lord and getting him to sing all the secrets he must surely hold within him or by finishing him off for real as a statement to how easily they could crush the opposition but this was not a very opportune moment and Antonin was really overcome by a mess of confusion now because—because—

Sitting across him Fabian sucked the last dregs of his Coke noisily up the straw, his lips pursed around the small tube, eyes open wide and looking up at him. He looked so gormless, and harmless, and spineless, and witless, and there was just really no telling that under it all he was a lethal and trained weapon of the Ministry out to hinder their cause in the most infuriating ways possible, and yet it could not be denied they had ability worthy of respect, but when this talent came wrapped in such an unbecoming exterior...

Antonin felt a wave of repulsion course through his body. He found it hard to accept this simpering, feeble boy as approaching his equal in magical ability. There was just no way one of the very, very few practitioners of elemental duelling on this earth was this freckled red headed boy with a shapeless bottom. He had heard, on occasion, the Dark Lord mentioning that Hogwarts harboured a duelling master by the name of Filius Flitwick, but had not made the imaginative leap needed to conceive of a duelling master of his status enlisting students of such an inappropriate disposition...

"How does being hit by a bus entail job failure for you?" Antonin sought to ask.

Fabian looked up from his empty glass bottle. It was at this moment that Antonin began to see that his mind did not just concoct harmless lies to mask his magical status. All the time, while speaking to him, his mind was whirring away to hide the devious nature of his secretive job in the mundane.

Fabian pulled a face. "I was needed for something important but the accident caused the entire department to be behind on some urgent work."

"Oh," Antonin said, putting on a mask of sympathy. In truth he was now beginning to be really excited at the recent turn of events. He realised that he could probably carry on seeming like a harmless muggle and extricate a lot of crucial information from Fabian along the way.

Fabian sighed again. He was now fiddling with the empty straw, biting and chewing on it absent-mindedly. There was something quite compelling about the way he played with the straw between his lips and the way he looked up at him, chin coyly tilted downwards, with those eyes so big and brown.

"So yes, I'm cheating on my boyfriend and I'm going to get a dressing down at work tomorrow. Wouldn't you say I'm a mess?"

"I can't say. I'm not your boyfriend, neither am I your colleague. You have done nothing wrong to me."

At those words Fabian broke into a smile. "You're so sweet," he simpered. "You like acting all gruff and tough but in actual fact you're a real sweetheart. Taking care of me, buying me food and drinks."

Antonin didn't know what to say in reply, so he kept silent. Under the table, he felt Fabian reach out with a wandering foot to nudge him up and down the calves. At this point, he realised that beyond the initial confusion and repulsion, above all he had been extremely turned on by this turn of events.


	48. Chapter 47

Alice strode into the office at her usual time. Fabian, who was usually on the side of five minutes late, was in early, and he was at his desk, scribbling furiously onto a ream of papyrus, his writing medium of choice as a vegetarian wizard. His shoulders seemed to be heaving, and when Alice saw his face and the papyrus he was writing on, both were tear-stained.

"Have you been crying?" Alice asked, matter-of-factly.

Fabian turned his face to look up at her, eyes shining and lips trembling. He bit his lip, and his mouth curved downwards. He was repressing the urge to sob. He took in several deep breaths, and gripped the edge of the table tightly. Pushing his chair backwards, he began to speak.

"I went to see Crouch."

"Oh," said Alice. "It is good you went to see him early. Get it over and done with, before the myriad demands of the day put further stress on his nerves, thus increasing his ferocity."

Fabian nodded sadly, still looking like he was about to burst into tears. Alice was awash with a fondness for him, for he seemed so guileless and undeserving of Crouch's anger. It was true that no Aurors were supposed to be on the scene, and it was by a stroke of luck there was even one to lend expertise to controlling the unexpected prison riot. Yet Alice also wondered if her friend was at all suitable for this line of work. He was so naturally bestowed with compassion and generosity of spirit it seemed that he would not survive for long in this job, where daily they faced the abyss of human darkness.

And yet like her he had over five years on the job, three in training and two as full-fledged Aurors. Their role was not known to the world, yet they undertook the most crucial task of preserving the security of the magical world, preventing it both from consuming the world in its own darkness and from total annihilation by muggles. The heads had assigned Fabian to the back end, in a research-intensive role, which required him to frequently dwell in the laboratories in the Department of Mysteries with the Unspeakables. It was where Ravenclaws were frequently shunted, but Alice believed she would be of better use out on the field and successfully persuaded Crouch to assign her to the role she wanted.

She was not prone to displays of affection, but she recognised that this was a situation that could be ameliorated with a hug, and so she reached out and squeezed Fabian around his shoulders. In that moment the thought came to her that if she were in his situation, that is, if she were the one sobbing and heaving at her desk on a workday morning, it would have been taken as a sign that she was too weak for the job and Crouch would have fired her for an improper outburst of feminine emotions. Fabian had sobbed many a time at his desk, and yet his tears seemed tolerated.

It was not without cost, on the other hand, for Fabian had confided in her often about his feelings of inadequacy on the job alongside people such as her. They were friends, certainly, but Alice wanted to say that it took her twice as much work as a witch to get the same recognition as any other wizard doing the same work.

A while later, the rest of the team filed in, and on hearing Fabian's sniffles and on seeing his hunched up pose, expressed varying degrees of disappointment that they missed Crouch's legendary displays of rage. Even without hearing his tirade Alice could make a reasoned guess at its content. He would have screamed at Fabian for encountering a Dark Wizard and failing to capture him, or to even pin down any identifying characteristics that could be subject to further investigation. On top of that, he let a detainee of an ongoing investigation escape with this Dark Wizard, and any dark magical activity to emerge in the next few weeks or so would squarely be Fabian's fault. It didn't matter that this was unplanned, all that did was that Fabian was in a situation to act and he failed to produce any positive result from it.

The day begun, Alice picked up some memos from her inbox. There was one case near Swansea, not particularly urgent, but it gave her a sudden craving for cockles. She decided she could squeeze this in between her other outfield investigations today, and set about preparing her notes and equipment.

...

White-grey gulls with their orange feet cawed from orange beaks while salty waves broke upon the sandy shore, in bursts of foam that frothed and subsided. The tide was receding, and the mouth of the bay was strewn with flotsam and debris and driftwood, webbed and gnarled like sunken sea-bones.

"This was where I found it, the branch that spread death in its deadness."

"How many casualties so far?"

"My dog, and a child before it."

"Why are children out on the beach during winter?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was lost."

Alice made a note to contact the local muggle police about the deceased child. She levitated the offending branch into an evidence bag. The branch was small, just a twig off a shrub, spiked with thorns and bleached pale by the sun and sea. It seemed common, and did not emanate any noticeable dark energy from its core. A cursory scan of the branch told her that this was not a local shrub, but further testing was needed to identity the exact species. Of more interest to her at this moment was the deceased muggle child.

She headed back into town, stopping by the police station to ask about the reported circumstances of this child's death. It seemed that this child died alone, and that she had died in the middle of the night several days ago. The owner of the dead dog found her bloated and pale body not too far from where his dog died, and he called the police down. No one had come forth to identify the child, and during the investigation the branch had caused several more accidental deaths, which led to the call for magical assistance.

Alice collected several more interviews on the incident, and moved on to her next investigation.


	49. Chapter 48

Fabian could not bear the humiliation of being in the office any longer. He did not have any lab space until after lunch and could not hide in the Department of Mysteries, and so he was forced to endure the susurrations of colleagues speculating on how much of a verbal hiding he got from Crouch, and how it mustn't have been so bad, only that he was too much of a crybaby to take it in stride.

At the stroke of lunchtime, he fled the office as quickly as he could, out into the cold January air. He was miserable, and he felt like he had a gaping deficiency within him, and he wanted someone to rough him up, to slap him out of silliness or to slap him out of his ineptitude—he didn't know. He just wanted to be out of the office, and he wanted someone to make him forget about the morning and though he had only left Tony's side this morning when he headed for work, he had already begun to miss his presence: the way he was so assertive and how he did everything for him. Without being conscious of it, Fabian found himself headed towards the camera shop in quick strides, and when he reached he feared Tony might not be at work and he would not know what to do, but all of that disappeared the moment he saw Tony behind the counter, fiddling with the shutter of some used camera traded in for secondhand sale.

"Hi," he said apprehensively, fearing that Tony would choose to ignore him.

Tony looked up at him. "How may I help you?"

"I feel terrible," Fabian began. "I feel like the biggest fuck up to ever fuck up, and objectively I don't think I fucked up that badly but it feels fucked up anyway."

Tony continued to fiddle with the shutter, not responding.

He leaned across the counter. "Fuck me," he said, oozing desperation. "I feel like shit. Fuck me badly, fuck me till it hurts—I don't care. Tell me I've been a bad boy, I want to know I deserve it."

Tony looked up from his camera. He looked around the shop, which was empty. He got up and closed the door, and flipped the sign over—"Sorry, We're Closed!"

"Do you really want me to do this?" he asked wearily, as if it were a particularly onerous task.

Fabian nodded, and then hung his head in shame.

Tony opened a door behind the counter, and gestured for him to go in. When they were both nestled in the room, which was small and cramped, Tony closed the door, plunging them into darkness.

"This room is completely black, for loading and unloading film," he explained.

Fabian nodded, but then realised Tony wouldn't have seen it.

"What did you do wrong?" Tony asked softly. He felt Tony kiss him on the jawline, just below the ear.

"I'm a bad boy. I'm a terrible boy. I can't do anything right," Fabian choked, nearly tearing up again at the thought of this morning's events.

He felt Tony's nose nuzzle the nape of his neck, and his skin began to tingle in anticipation. There was some rustling as Tony removed his coat for him.

"There is a table, here," Tony said, pushing him against the hard, straight edge of it. Fabian heard the sound of his coat dropping on the table in a folded heap.

Though it was pitch-black, Fabian closed his eyes anyway. He reached out and grabbed Tony by the waist, pulling him in, feeling the weight of him press against his body. Tony kissed him down the neck and breathed down his chest with kisses light as a flutter. He heard Tony undoing his belt, tugging the fly open, pushing down his trousers and underwear so it bunched just below the crotch. He felt Tony wrap his hands around his cock, tugging at it in a twisting motion, felt Tony's thumb swipe across the tip of it, felt Tony's thumb pushing back his foreskin.

"Fuck me," he begged, wishing Tony would flip him over and plough into him hard, without warning. He wanted to feel like he was being used, he wanted some thick cock digging deep into him, filling him up with fullness.

But Tony had other ideas. With his hands around the shaft he wrapped his lips over the head of Fabian's cock, pressing his tongue against the underside.

"Fuck," Fabian gasped, hips jutting upward. With two fingers grasping the base of his cock in a tight ring, Tony took the rest of his cock into his mouth as it swelled upright.

"Fuck," Fabian cried again, overcome with incoherency.

He felt Tony's mouth moving up and down the length of his cock, slick with the sound of sucking, and then he felt Tony's tongue, searching and soft, press against his balls and around the base of his cock then all the way up to the tip, where his cock plunged once again into the depths of Tony's soft, hot mouth. Sucking hungrily at his head Tony pumped a fist around the rest of his cock, before moving to kiss him below the belly button, down the trail of fuzz that led to his crotch.

With a wet finger he massaged the opening to his anus, flicking at it with his tongue, before poking a searching finger through the hole. At the same time he proceeded to take his entire cock into his mouth, as if swallowing him whole, sucking and kissing and licking, all while gently squeezing on his balls and massaging his arsehole and perineum.

Fabian reached out, combing his fingers into Tony's hair, and he thought about how brown and shiny it was when it was in sunlight and how it softened the angles of his harsh, longish jaw. He thought about Tony's pillowy lips, how moist and pink they were, moulded into a slight pout, and how they were now wrapped around his cock and he longed to be able to see it, to see Tony sucking at his cock instead of just feeling it and knowing it was Tony who did so. His face was so beautiful and Fabian wondered if his mortal eyes could ever behold such a sight. He didn't even know why Tony was doing this for him, when he was so terribly unloveable. Was this why they were in complete darkness? That the sight of him was such a turnoff he could only concentrate without seeing? He trailed a hand down the side of Tony's face and traced his lower jaw with a finger. His heart wrenched with longing even as he was on the verge of coming.

With a gasp he spurted into Tony's waiting mouth, Tony's fist still pumping vigorously up and down his cock. He thrust deeper into Tony's mouth, and Tony took him in again at length, tongue pressed against the tip, pooling the come in his mouth without swallowing. When he was done Tony grasped his hips roughly and flipped him around, pushing him up forcefully against the table, and, parting his butt cheeks, spat the come into his arsehole.

"Oh my God," Fabian gasped, realising what was going to happen next. "Fuck me," he cried. "I want you in me, I want your thick cock in me."

This Tony obliged, as Fabian heard him remove his trousers. Bent over on the table, he pushed his arse backwards and rubbed it against Tony's thigh. He heard Tony spit on his hand, heard it slick around Tony's cock, and felt Tony insert two wet fingers up his arse to stretch him out. Fabian gasped in anticipation, and clenched around Tony's fingers. Tony pulled out his fingers, and Fabian felt him rub the tip of his engorged cock around his arsehole, before pushing it in slowly.

"Fuck me, fuck me," Fabian begged, nearly screaming with desperation. He loved Tony's cock, he loved how large and thick it was and how straight it grew, blooming into a fat mushroom head. He loved how heavy it was especially against his skinny thighs, and he loved it so much the thought of it could drive him mad with want. He wanted to take it in and leave it there forever, fuck himself forever, impaled by this cock forever.

He was moaning and groaning incoherently with exertion, arse wiggling in the air, as Tony dipped his cock in and out several times. He pleaded for Tony to go faster, to fuck him into tomorrow or maybe oblivion. God he loved being stretched out like that, it made him feel so full and so fucking good. Tony began to thrust into him at a quicker pace and Fabian was almost shouting and crying himself silly. Oh God this cock was so fucking good he swore he could never love another cock like he loved this one. He buried his head into the crook of his elbow to muffle his rambling and screaming, all while he felt Tony's grip tighten on his hipbones so hard it felt like he was going to snap his pelvis into half. Tony was screwing into him relentlessly, sometimes faster and sometimes slower and Fabian felt like he was being pushed to the brink of existence. He moaned and arched backwards, grasping weakly behind him, wrapping his arm around Tony's neck, pushing his arse firmly against Tony, close enough to feel his balls slap into him. Tony leaned forward to kiss him on the shoulder blades, burying his face between them. Fabian heard his breath hitch and he heard him let out a whimper. He found it particularly charming that Tony was so quiet during sex, so controlled and in control. In contrast he was a quivering mess of a noisy blob begging and pleading and crying without dignity.

He heard Tony whimper softly again, and good lord that sound, that small sound, like he was at the limits of his quiet restraint, reached straight down to some unholy place within Fabian and he was soon cresting on another orgasm, despite that his now-flaccid penis was squashed uncomfortably on the table, the edge of which he gripped so tightly as his body was overcome by uncontrollable spasms. Sounds, half-formed and primal, tumbled from his mouth as he screamed and grunted his way through his second climax. He heard Tony's breath turn ragged from somewhere behind him as he thrust furiously into his arsehole and he felt Tony's hand hold on to his in a crushing grip and he felt Tony double over as he came into him with hardly a sound.

When he was done he pushed his cock in deeply a final time, slick and slippery with commingled come. After some while, he felt Tony slowly pull his cock out, and with his arsehole still puckering and clenching Fabian felt the come dribble down the inside of his thigh, sticky and hot. It was a good thing he kept some spare outfits at his desk in the office, for he was probably in no presentable state.

Tony produced a wiping cloth out of somewhere and roughly wiped him down in the dark, before moving on to wipe himself. There was the sound of him pulling up his trousers and zipping up the fly, and refastening the belt. Fabian took the cue to hastily pull on his clothes. Fabian wondered if he should say something, but it was then Tony opened the door and the glare of the outside light overwhelmed him. As he left the room, squinting, he realised that behind the counter sat another man, flipping through a catalogue, marking some pages with ticks. On noticing them, he looked up with beady eyes and a prurient smirk.

"Had a good lunch?" he asked gruffly.

"Shut up," Tony said, devoid of any expression, and returned to the camera with the wonky shutter.

Fabian looked around, embarrassed. He didn't know if it was wise to utter anything, but he mumbled that he was leaving and with the tiniest of waves scampered out from the shop.


End file.
